A postcard with Akhenaten scene with the Solar god, Aten.
This postcard is
- 5.6X4.25 inches
- Made of ultra-heavyweight paper (120lb.) with a gloss finish.
- Only $1.38 with no minimum order.
Showing posts with label Akhenaten. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Akhenaten. Show all posts
$1.38: Postcard of Akhenaten Praising the Solar God Aten.
This postcard is
Playing Cards with Scene of Akhenaten Worshiping Aten - $25.00
With the famous scene of ancient Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten worshiping his famous Solar god, Aten.
These 50 playing cards with 2 jokers can make a great gift.
They are available in 11 different styles.
They are:
- Easy to shuffle, durable semi-gloss cards.
- 52 playing cards and 2 Jokers per deck.
- Comes with standard Bicycle cardboard case.
- Made in Kansas City, Kansas.
A Mousepad of Akhenaten Praising Aten - $15.00
Get this mousepad and show love and support to the great ancient Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, his wife Nefertiti and their brand new religion.The mousepad is:
- 9.25" x 7.75"
- Quality, full-color printing.
- Durable cloth cover is dust and stain resistant.
- Non-slip backing.
Amarna - The Sacred City of Akhetaten
What is Akhetaten / el-Amarna?
Akhetaten (or el-Amarna, as it is called now), is a city that was built by the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. Akhenaten and his beautiful wife Nefertiti founded a new monotheist religion and they wanted to convert the country somehow, but they realized that the power of Thebes and its priests is very challenging, so they wanted to move the capital to a new city, thus Akhetaten was founded, for the sole purpose of praising the new monotheist god, Aten.
What makes Akhetaten unique is the fact that the spot wasn't occupied before the city was built, and was abandoned right after the city's short life as a capital.
Posters of el-Amarna/Akhetaten.
There are a few posters taken from the actual site of el-Amarna. They are available online if you want to buy one of them. If you click on one of these pictures, you will be taken to a page where you will find the price and the details of each picture, the sizes and prices vary, but basically, the average size is 18 x 24 inches. A good idea if you want to hang them on your wall. Let's take a look:
Books about el-Amarna:
Though el-Amarna city had a very short life, it represents a very important era of ancient Egypt history, many books were completely dedicated just for that city and the innovation it represented both on the spiritual and architectural sides.
Please note that the last book "Amarna Sunset" takes on the ending of el-Amarna period and the restoration of the old Theban way of life. It is still very interesting, though.
Meritaten
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| Relief showing Royal couple, usually identified as Meritaten and her husband and half-brother Smenkhkare (but occasionally identified as Akhenaten and Nefertiti). The piece is of unconfirmed provenance, but is believed to have come from a private Amarna house. The queen is offering a bouquet to her husband. |
For a long time Egyptologists believed that Meritaten must have married her father. Now, with smenkhare recognized as a real, male heir to the throne, it seems clear that she married her half-brother as he became co-regent to his father Akhenaten. The Amarna tomb of Meryre II provides us with a glimpse of the new royal couple. On the south and east walls of the main chamber we see Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters; these walls were clearly carved before death tore the original Amarna family apart. The unfinished image on the north wall shows a king and queen standing beneath the rays of the Aten. The figures of the royal couple look like Akhenaten and Nefertiti but their recorded cartouches belong to 'King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Ankhkeprure son of Re, Smenkhkare' and the 'King's Great Wife Meritaten'. Unfortunately the king's cartouche has since been hacked off the wall by theives and is now lost.
Two unexplained princesses, Meritaten the Younger and Ankhesenpaaten the Younger, who appear at this time may well be daughters born to Meritaten and Smenkhkare (alternatively, they may be daughters born to Kiya and Akhenaten). But when Smenkhkare died after the briefest of reigns, most if not all of which had been spent ruling alongside his father Akhenaten, he left no male heir. After a possible brief and ill-documented period of rule by the otherwise unknown female king Neferneferuaten (Meritaten?), Smenkhkare was succeeded by his young brother Tutankhaten (re-named Tutankhamun) and his sister-consort, Ankhesenpaaten (Ankhesenamun). Meritaten, dis placed by her sister, vanished; her body has never been found.
Amenhotep III. 18th Dynasty
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(18th Dynasty, part XIII)
Chronicles of the Pharaohs
If you want to learn more about the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, you will love the book Chronicle of the Pharaohs: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt (The Chronicles Series)
.
This book tells you the complete story of ancient Egypt through its pharaohs' lives. You will not only learn about the famous pharaohs, but you will also meet infamous pharaohs, maybe for the first time.
Purchase your copy from Amazon and write a review about it here for other visitors, please.
(18th Dynasty, part XIII)
Amenhotep III's long reign of almost 40 years was one of the most prosperous and stable in Egyptian history. His great-grandfather, Tuthmosis III, had laid the foundations of the Egyptian empire by his campaigns into Syria, Nubia and Libya. Hardly any military activity was called for under Amenhotep III, and such little as there was, in Nubia, was directed by his son and viceroy of Kush, Merymose.
Amenhotep III was the son of Tuthmosis IV by one of his chief wives, Queen Mutemwiya. It is possible [though now doubted by some) that she was the daughter of the Mitannian king, Artatama, sent to the Egyptian court as part of a diplomatic arrangement to cement the alliance between the strong militarist state of Mitanni in Syria and
Egypt. The king's royal birth is depicted in a series of reliefs in a room on the east side of the temple of Luxor which Amenhotep III built for Amon. The creator god, the ramheaded Khnum of Elephantine, is seen fashioning the young king and his ka (spirit double) on a potter's wheel, watched by the goddess Isis. The god Amun is then led to his meeting with the queen by ibis-headed Thoth, god of wisdom. Subsequently, Amun is shown standing in the presence of the goddesses Hathor and Mut and nursing the child created by Khnum.
Amenhotep III was the son of Tuthmosis IV by one of his chief wives, Queen Mutemwiya. It is possible [though now doubted by some) that she was the daughter of the Mitannian king, Artatama, sent to the Egyptian court as part of a diplomatic arrangement to cement the alliance between the strong militarist state of Mitanni in Syria and
Egypt. The king's royal birth is depicted in a series of reliefs in a room on the east side of the temple of Luxor which Amenhotep III built for Amon. The creator god, the ramheaded Khnum of Elephantine, is seen fashioning the young king and his ka (spirit double) on a potter's wheel, watched by the goddess Isis. The god Amun is then led to his meeting with the queen by ibis-headed Thoth, god of wisdom. Subsequently, Amun is shown standing in the presence of the goddesses Hathor and Mut and nursing the child created by Khnum.
The early years of Amenhotep III
Amenhotep III's reign falls essentially into two unequal parts. The first decade reflected a young and vigorous king, promoting the sportsman image laid down by his predecessors and with some minor military activity. In Year 5 there was an expedition to Nubia, recorded on rock inscriptions near Aswan and at Konosso in Nubia. Although couched in the usual laudatory manner, the event recorded seems to have been rather low key. An undated stele from Semna (now in the British Museum) also records a Nubian campaign, but whether it is the same one or a later one is uncertain. A rebellion at Ibhet is reported as having been heavily crushed by the viceroy of Nubia, "King's Son of Kush", Merymose. Although the king, 'mighty bull, strong in might, the fierce-eyed lion' is noted as having made great slaughter within the space of a single hour, he was probably not present; nevertheless, 150 Nubian men, 250 women, 175 children, 110 archers, and 55 servan a total of 740 - were said to have been captured, to which was added the 312 right hands of the slain.
Amenhotep III's reign falls essentially into two unequal parts. The first decade reflected a young and vigorous king, promoting the sportsman image laid down by his predecessors and with some minor military activity. In Year 5 there was an expedition to Nubia, recorded on rock inscriptions near Aswan and at Konosso in Nubia. Although couched in the usual laudatory manner, the event recorded seems to have been rather low key. An undated stele from Semna (now in the British Museum) also records a Nubian campaign, but whether it is the same one or a later one is uncertain. A rebellion at Ibhet is reported as having been heavily crushed by the viceroy of Nubia, "King's Son of Kush", Merymose. Although the king, 'mighty bull, strong in might, the fierce-eyed lion' is noted as having made great slaughter within the space of a single hour, he was probably not present; nevertheless, 150 Nubian men, 250 women, 175 children, 110 archers, and 55 servan a total of 740 - were said to have been captured, to which was added the 312 right hands of the slain.
The opulent years of Amenhotep III
The last 25 years of Amenhotep III's reign seem to have been a period of great building works and luxury at court and in the arts. The laudatory epithets that accompany the king's name are more grandiose metaphen than records of fact: he took the Horus name 'Great of Strength who Smites the Asiatics', when there is little evidence of such a campaign, similarly, 'Plunderer of Shinar' and 'Crusher of Naharin' seem singularly inappropriate, particularly the latter since one of his wives, Gilukhepa, was a princess of Naharin.
The last 25 years of Amenhotep III's reign seem to have been a period of great building works and luxury at court and in the arts. The laudatory epithets that accompany the king's name are more grandiose metaphen than records of fact: he took the Horus name 'Great of Strength who Smites the Asiatics', when there is little evidence of such a campaign, similarly, 'Plunderer of Shinar' and 'Crusher of Naharin' seem singularly inappropriate, particularly the latter since one of his wives, Gilukhepa, was a princess of Naharin.
The wealth of Egypt at this period came not from the spoils of conquest, as it had under Tuthmosis III, but from international trade and an abundant supply of gold (from mines in the Wadi Hammamat and from panning gold dust far south into the land of Kush). It was this great wealth and booming economy that led to such an outpouring of artistic talent in all aspects of the arts.
Since the houses or palaces of the living were regarded as ephemeral, we unfortunately have little evidence of the magnificence of a palace such as Amenhotep's Malkata palace. Fragments of the building, however, indicate that the walls were once plastered and painted with lively scenes from nature. Many of the temples he built have been destroyed too. At Karnak he embellished the already large temple to Amun and at Luxor he built a new one to the same god, of which the still standing colonnaded court is a masterpiece of elegance and design. Particular credit is owed to his master architect: Amenhotep son of Hapu.
On the west bank, his mortuary temple was destroyed in the next (19th) dynasty when it, like many of its predecessors, was used as a quarry. All that now remains of this temple are the two imposing statues of the king known as the Colossi of Memnon. (This is in fact a complete misnomer, arising from the classical recognition of the statues as the Ethiopian prince, Memnon, who fought at Troy.) Of the two, the southern statue is the best preserved. Standing beside the king's legs, dwarfed by his stature, are the two important women in his life: his mother Mutemwiya and his wife, Queen Tiy. A quarter of a mile behind the Colossi stands a great repaired stele that was once in the sanctuary and around are fragments of sculptures, the best of which, lying in a pit and found in recent years, is a crocodile-tailed sphinx.
Since the houses or palaces of the living were regarded as ephemeral, we unfortunately have little evidence of the magnificence of a palace such as Amenhotep's Malkata palace. Fragments of the building, however, indicate that the walls were once plastered and painted with lively scenes from nature. Many of the temples he built have been destroyed too. At Karnak he embellished the already large temple to Amun and at Luxor he built a new one to the same god, of which the still standing colonnaded court is a masterpiece of elegance and design. Particular credit is owed to his master architect: Amenhotep son of Hapu.
On the west bank, his mortuary temple was destroyed in the next (19th) dynasty when it, like many of its predecessors, was used as a quarry. All that now remains of this temple are the two imposing statues of the king known as the Colossi of Memnon. (This is in fact a complete misnomer, arising from the classical recognition of the statues as the Ethiopian prince, Memnon, who fought at Troy.) Of the two, the southern statue is the best preserved. Standing beside the king's legs, dwarfed by his stature, are the two important women in his life: his mother Mutemwiya and his wife, Queen Tiy. A quarter of a mile behind the Colossi stands a great repaired stele that was once in the sanctuary and around are fragments of sculptures, the best of which, lying in a pit and found in recent years, is a crocodile-tailed sphinx.
A peak of artistic achievement of Amenhotep III
Some magnificent statuary dates from the reign of Amenhotep III such as the two outstanding couchant rose granite lions originally set before the temple at Soleb in Nubia (but subsequently removed to the temple at Gebel Barlzal further south in the Sudan). There is also a proliferation of private statues, particularly of the architect Amenhotep son of Hapu, but also of many other nobles and dignitaries.
It is in the great series of royal portraits, however, that the sculptor's art is truly seen. Largest of them all (after the Colossi of Memnon) is the huge limestone statue of the king and queen with three small standing princesses from Medinet Habu. There are many other representations of the king, all of which project the contemplative, almost ethereal, aspect of the king's features. Magnificently worked black granite seated statues of Amenhotep wearing the nemes headdress have come from excavations behind the Colossi of Memnon (by Belzoni) and from Tanis in the Delta. A number of statues of the king were reworked by later rulers, often by simply adding their cartouches, or occasionally altering the features or aspects of the body, as with the huge red granite head hitherto identified as being Tuthmosis III from Karnak (also found by Belzoni) and reworked by Ramesses II [now in the British Museum). Several portraits in statues, reliefs and wall paintings show the king wearing the helmet-like khepresh, the so-called Blue or War Crown.
One of the most incredible finds of statuary in recent years was made in the courtyard of the Amenhotep III colonnade of the Luxor temple in 1989. It included a superb 6-ft (1.83-m) high pink quartzite statue of the king standing on a sledge and wearing the Double Crown. The only damage the statue had sustained was under Akhenaten when, very carefully, the hated name of Amon was removed from the cartouch when it appeared as part of the king's name. The inscriptions on the statue and its iconography suggest that it is a work from late in the despite the idealized youthful features of the king. It may possibly have been a cult statue.
Some magnificent statuary dates from the reign of Amenhotep III such as the two outstanding couchant rose granite lions originally set before the temple at Soleb in Nubia (but subsequently removed to the temple at Gebel Barlzal further south in the Sudan). There is also a proliferation of private statues, particularly of the architect Amenhotep son of Hapu, but also of many other nobles and dignitaries.
It is in the great series of royal portraits, however, that the sculptor's art is truly seen. Largest of them all (after the Colossi of Memnon) is the huge limestone statue of the king and queen with three small standing princesses from Medinet Habu. There are many other representations of the king, all of which project the contemplative, almost ethereal, aspect of the king's features. Magnificently worked black granite seated statues of Amenhotep wearing the nemes headdress have come from excavations behind the Colossi of Memnon (by Belzoni) and from Tanis in the Delta. A number of statues of the king were reworked by later rulers, often by simply adding their cartouches, or occasionally altering the features or aspects of the body, as with the huge red granite head hitherto identified as being Tuthmosis III from Karnak (also found by Belzoni) and reworked by Ramesses II [now in the British Museum). Several portraits in statues, reliefs and wall paintings show the king wearing the helmet-like khepresh, the so-called Blue or War Crown.
One of the most incredible finds of statuary in recent years was made in the courtyard of the Amenhotep III colonnade of the Luxor temple in 1989. It included a superb 6-ft (1.83-m) high pink quartzite statue of the king standing on a sledge and wearing the Double Crown. The only damage the statue had sustained was under Akhenaten when, very carefully, the hated name of Amon was removed from the cartouch when it appeared as part of the king's name. The inscriptions on the statue and its iconography suggest that it is a work from late in the despite the idealized youthful features of the king. It may possibly have been a cult statue.
The two most widely known portraits of Queen Tiy are the small ebony head in Berlin which, in the past, caused many authorities to suggest that she came from south of Aswan, and the petite-faced and crowned head found by Petrie at the temple of Serabit el-Khadim in Sinai which is identified as the queen by her cartouch on the front of her crown. Other fine reliefs of her come from the tombs of some of the courtiers in her service such as Userhet (TT 47) and Kheruef (TT 192).
Death and burial of Amenhotep III
Inscribed clay dockets from the Malkata palace carry dates into at least Year 38 of Amenhotep's reign, implying that he may have died in his 39th regnal year when he would have been about 45 years old.
Inscribed clay dockets from the Malkata palace carry dates into at least Year 38 of Amenhotep's reign, implying that he may have died in his 39th regnal year when he would have been about 45 years old.
His robbed tomb was rediscovered by the French expedition in 1799 in the western Valley of the Kings (KV 22). Amongst the debris, they found a large number of ushabtis of the king, some complete but mostly broken, made of black and red granite, alabaster and cedar wood. Some were considerably larger than normal. Excavations and clearance by Howard Carter in 1915 revealed foundation deposits of Tuthmosis IV, showing that the tomb had been originally intended for that king. Despite this, the tomb was eventually used for Amenhotep III, and also for Queen Tiy to judge from the fragments found of several different ushabtis of the queen.
Queen Tiy survived her husband by several years - possibly by as many as 12, since she is shown with her youngest daughter, Beket Aten, in a relief in one of the Amarna tombs that is dated between Years 9 and 12 of her son's reign. (Beket-Aten is shown as a very young child and must have been born shortly before Amenhotep died, or even posthumously.) We know from polite enquiries about Tiy's health in the Amarna Letters (p. 126) that she lived for a while at Akhetaten (modern el-Amarna), the new capital of her son Akhenaten. It has been suggested that there was a period of co-regency between the old king and his successor, but the argument is not proved either way. An interesting painted sandstone stele found in a private household shrine at el-Amarna shows an elderly, rather obese Amenhotep III, seated with Queen Tiy. Whether he actually lived for a time in this city is a matter of conjecture; Tiy certainly did and may well have died there, to be taken back to Thebes for burial.
Amenhotep III's mummy was probably one of those found by Loret in 1898 in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV 35), although recently it has been suggested that this body was wrongly identified by the ancient priests
when it was transferred to the new tomb. On biological grounds, professors Ed Wente and John Harris have proposed it to be the body of Akhenaten, or possibly Ay. A previously unidentified female mummy (the Elder Woman) from the same cache has been tentatively identified as Queen Tiy, based on the examination of her hair and a lock of hair in a small coffin from the tomb of Tutankhamun inscriptionally identified as Tiy's.
Queen Tiy survived her husband by several years - possibly by as many as 12, since she is shown with her youngest daughter, Beket Aten, in a relief in one of the Amarna tombs that is dated between Years 9 and 12 of her son's reign. (Beket-Aten is shown as a very young child and must have been born shortly before Amenhotep died, or even posthumously.) We know from polite enquiries about Tiy's health in the Amarna Letters (p. 126) that she lived for a while at Akhetaten (modern el-Amarna), the new capital of her son Akhenaten. It has been suggested that there was a period of co-regency between the old king and his successor, but the argument is not proved either way. An interesting painted sandstone stele found in a private household shrine at el-Amarna shows an elderly, rather obese Amenhotep III, seated with Queen Tiy. Whether he actually lived for a time in this city is a matter of conjecture; Tiy certainly did and may well have died there, to be taken back to Thebes for burial.
Amenhotep III's mummy was probably one of those found by Loret in 1898 in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV 35), although recently it has been suggested that this body was wrongly identified by the ancient priests
when it was transferred to the new tomb. On biological grounds, professors Ed Wente and John Harris have proposed it to be the body of Akhenaten, or possibly Ay. A previously unidentified female mummy (the Elder Woman) from the same cache has been tentatively identified as Queen Tiy, based on the examination of her hair and a lock of hair in a small coffin from the tomb of Tutankhamun inscriptionally identified as Tiy's.
Amenhotep III Names and Burial
Birth name: Amen-hotep (heqa-waset) (Amun is Pleased, Ruler of Thebes)
Throne name: Nub-maat-re (Lord of Tuth is Ra)
Burial: Tomb KV 22, Valley of the Kings, Thebes
If you want to learn more about the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, you will love the book Chronicle of the Pharaohs: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt (The Chronicles Series)
. This book tells you the complete story of ancient Egypt through its pharaohs' lives. You will not only learn about the famous pharaohs, but you will also meet infamous pharaohs, maybe for the first time.
Purchase your copy from Amazon and write a review about it here for other visitors, please.
Akhenaten, Amenhotep IV. 18th Dynasty.
Posters of Akhentaten
You want to show respect and love to the great revolutionary pharaoh Akhenaten? You can get one of these posters to hang on your wall! They are very cheap and they are very beautiful. I believe the average poster size is 18" x 24" (inches). And the average price is $20 to $40 US Dollars. However, prices and sizes will vary, just take a look at these outstanding posters that could bring both your wall and Akhenaten to life!
Just in case you are wondering, the two gray posters with a sun disk, represent the relatively-new revolutionary religion that Akhenaten has created with his wife (Nefertiti, who is also there with him in three of these posters). Akhenaten and Nefertiti have changed the country's religious views into monotheist views. Their god Aten (the sun-disk god) was praised and a new city (called Akhetaten or Amarna) was just built for that cause, and then the capital was moving from Thebes to Akhetaten for a while.
Here are a few posters of Amarna:
Amenhotep IV - better known as Akhenaten, the new name he took early on in his reign - ushered in a revolutionary period in Egypt history. The Amarna Interlude, as it is often called, saw the removal of the seat of government to a short-lived new capital city, Akhetaten (modern el-Amarna, a new book is going to be released in a few weeks, make sure to pre-order it)
, the introduction of a new art style, and the elevation of the cult of the sun disc, the Aten, to pre-eminent status in Egyptian religion. This last heresy in particular was to bring down on Akhenaten and his immediate successors the opprobrium of later kings.
The young prince was at least the second son of Amenhotep III by his chief wife, Tiy: an elder brother, prince Tuthmosis, had died prematurely (strangely, a whip bearing his name was found in Tutankhamun's tomb). There is some controversy over whether or not the old king took his son into partnership on the throne in a co-regency - there are quite strong arguments both for and against. A point in favour of a co-regency is the appearance during the latter years of Amenhotep III's reign of artistic styles that are subsequently seen as part of the 'revolutionary Amarna art introduced by Akhenaten; on the other hand, both traditional' and 'revolutionary' art styles could easily have coexisted during the early years of Akhenaten's reign. At any rate, if there had been a coregency, it would not have been for longer than the short period before the new king assumed his preferred name of Akhenaten ('Servant of the Aten') in Year 5.
The beginning of Akhenaten's reign marked no great discontinuity with that of his predecessors. Not only was he crowned at Karnak (temple of the god Amun) but, like his father, he married a lady of non-royal blood, Nefertiti, the daughter of the vizier Ay. Ay seems to have been a brother of Queen Tiy and a son of Yuya and Tuya. Nefertiti's mother is not known; she may have died in c;hildbirth or shortly afterwards, since Nefertiti seems to have been brought up by another wife of Ay named Tey, who would then be her stepmother.
Akhenaten and the cult of the Aten
There can be httle doubt that the new king was far more of a thinker and philosopher than his forebears. Amenhotep III had recognized the growing power of the priesthood of Amun and had sought to curb it; his son was to take the matter a lot further by introducing a new monotheistic cult of sun-worship that was incarnate in the sun's disc, the Aten.
This was not in itself a new idea: as a relatively minor aspect of the sun god Re-Harakhte, the Aten had been venerated in the Old Kingdom and a large scarab of Akhenaten's grandfather Tuthmosis IV (now in the British Museum) has a text that mentions the Aten. Rather Akhenaten's innovation was to worship the Aten in its own right Portrayed as a solar disc whose protective rays terminated in hands holding the ankh hieroglyph for life, the Aten was accessible only to Akhenaten, thereby obviating the need for an intermediate priesthood.
At first, the king built a temple to his god Aten immediately outside the east gate of the temple of Amun at Karnak, but clearly the coexis tence of the two cults could not last. He therefore proscribed the cult of Amun, closed the god's temples, took over the revenues and, to make a complete break, in Year 6 moved to a new capital in Middle Egypt, half way between Memphis and Thebes. It was a virgin site, not previously dedicated to any other god or goddess, and he named it Akhetaten - The Horizon of the Aten. Today the site is known as el-Amarna.
In the tomb of Ay, the chief minister of Akhenaten (and later to become king after Tutankhamun's death, p. 136), occurs the longest and best rendition of a composition known as the 'Hymn to the Aten', said to have been written by Akhenaten himself. Quite moving in itself as a piece of poetry, its similarity to, and possible source of the concept in, Psalm 104 has long been noted. It sums up the whole ethos of the Aten cult and especially the concept that only Akhenaten had access to the god: 'Thou arisest fair in the horizon of Heaven, 0 Living Aten, Beginner of Life ... there is none who knows thee save thy son Akhenaten. Thou hast made him wise in thy plans and thy power.' No longer did the dead call upon Osiris to guide them through the afterworld, for only through their adherence to the king and his intercession on their behalf could they hope to live beyond the grave.
According to present evidence, however, it appears that it was only the upper echelons of society which embraced the new religion with any fervour (and perhaps that was only skin deep). Excavations at .'Amarna have indicated that even here the old way of religion continued among the ordinary people. On a wider scale, throughout Egypt, the new cult does not seem to have had much effect at a common level except, of course, in dismantling the priesthood and closing the temples; but then the ordinary populace had had little to do with the religious establishment anyway, except on the high days and holidays when the god's statue would be carried in procession from the sanctuary outside the great temple walls.
The standard bureaucracy continued its endeavours to run the country while the king courted his god. Cracks in the Egyptian empire may have begun to appear in the later years of the reign of Amenhotep III; at any rate they became more evident as Akhenaten increasingly left government and diplomats to their own devices. Civil and military authority came under two strong characters: Ay, who held the title 'Father of the God' land was probably Akhenaten's father-in-IawL and the general Horemheb (also Ay's son-in-law since he married Ay's daughter Mutnodjme, sister of Nefertiti). Both men were to become pharaoh before the 18th Dynasty ended. This redoubtable pair of closely related high officials no doubt kept everything under control in a discreet manner while Akhenaten pursued his own philosophical and religious interests.
The new artistic style of Akhenaten
It is evident from the art of the Amarna period that the court officially emulated the king's unusual physical characteristics. Thus individuals such as the young princesses are endowed with elongated skulls and excessive adiposity, while Bek - the Chief Sculptor and Master of Works - portrays himself in the likeness of his king with pendulous breasts and protruding stomach. On a stele now in Berlin Bek states that he was taught by His Majesty and that the court sculptors were instructed to represent what they saw. The result is a realism that breaks away from the rigid formality of earlier official depictions although naturalism is very evident in earlier, unofficial art.
The power behind Akhenaten's throne?
Although the famous bust of Nefertiti in Berlin shows her with an elongated neck, the queen is not subject to quite the same extreme as others in Amarna art, by virtue of being elegantly female. Indeed there are several curious aspects of Nefertiti's representation. early years of Akhenaten's reign, for instance, Nefertiti was an unusually prominent figure in official art, dominating the scenes carved on blocks of the temple to the Aten at Karnak. One such block shows her in the age-old warlike posture of pharaoh grasping captives by the hair and smiting them with a mace - hardly the epitome of the peaceful queen and mother of six daughters. Nefertiti evidently played a far more prominent part in her husband's rule than was the norm.
Tragedy seems to have struck the royal family in about Year 12 with the death in childbirth of Nefertiti's second daughter, Mekytaten, it is probably she who is shown in a relief in the royal tomb with her stricken parents beside her supine body, and a nurse standing nearby holding a baby. The father of the infant was possibly Akhenaten, since he is also known to have married two other daughters, Merytaren (not to be confused with Mekytaten) and Akhesenpaaten (later to Tutankhamun's wife).
Nefertiti appears to have died soon after Year 12, although some suggest that she was disgraced because her name was replaced in several instances by that of her daughter Merytaten, who succeed her as 'Great Royal Wife'. The latter bore a daughter called Merytaten-tasherit (Merytaten the Younger), also possibly fathered by Akhentaten. Merytaten was to become the wife of Smenkhkare, Akhenatten's brief successor. Nefertiti was buried in the royal tomb at Amarna, judging by the evidence of a fragment of an alabaster ushabti figure bearing her cartouch found there in the early 1930s.
Akhetaten (or el-Amarna as it is now known) is an important site because it was occupied neither before nor after its short life as capital under Akhenaten. It is ringed by a natural amphitheater of cliffs on both sides of the Nile and delineated by a series of 15 large stele carved in the rock around its perimeter. On the stele, reliefs show Akhenaten adoring his god in the company of his wife and various of their six daughters, and give instructions that all should be buried within the city's sacred precincts. To this end a royal tomb was cut in a remote wadi situated mid-way between the tombs of the nobbles, now referred to the North and the South tombs.
Akhenaten's resting place
Akhenaten died c. 1334, probably in his 16th regnal year. Evidence found by Professor Geoffrey Martin during re-excavation of the royal tomb at Amarna showed that blocking had been put in place in the burial chamber, suggesting that Akhenaten was buried there initially. Others do not believe that the tomb was used, however, in view of the heavily smashed fragments of his sarcophagus and canopic jars r recovered from it, and also the shattered examples of his ushabtis - found not only in the area of the tomb but also by Petrie in the city.
What is almost certain is that his body did not remain at Amarna. A burnt mummy seen outside the royal tomb in the 1880s, and associated with Egyptian jewelry from the tomb (including a small gold finger ring with Nefertiti's cartouch), was probably Coptic, as was other Egyptian jewelry nearby. Akhenaten's adherents would not have left his body to be despoiled by his enemies once his death and the return to orthodoxy unleashed a backlash of destruction. They would have taken it to a place of safety - and where better to hide it than in the old royal burial ground at Thebes where enemies would never dream of seeking it?
You want to show respect and love to the great revolutionary pharaoh Akhenaten? You can get one of these posters to hang on your wall! They are very cheap and they are very beautiful. I believe the average poster size is 18" x 24" (inches). And the average price is $20 to $40 US Dollars. However, prices and sizes will vary, just take a look at these outstanding posters that could bring both your wall and Akhenaten to life!
Just in case you are wondering, the two gray posters with a sun disk, represent the relatively-new revolutionary religion that Akhenaten has created with his wife (Nefertiti, who is also there with him in three of these posters). Akhenaten and Nefertiti have changed the country's religious views into monotheist views. Their god Aten (the sun-disk god) was praised and a new city (called Akhetaten or Amarna) was just built for that cause, and then the capital was moving from Thebes to Akhetaten for a while.
Here are a few posters of Amarna:
Amenhotep IV - better known as Akhenaten, the new name he took early on in his reign - ushered in a revolutionary period in Egypt history. The Amarna Interlude, as it is often called, saw the removal of the seat of government to a short-lived new capital city, Akhetaten (modern el-Amarna, a new book is going to be released in a few weeks, make sure to pre-order it)
, the introduction of a new art style, and the elevation of the cult of the sun disc, the Aten, to pre-eminent status in Egyptian religion. This last heresy in particular was to bring down on Akhenaten and his immediate successors the opprobrium of later kings.
The beginning of Akhenaten's reign marked no great discontinuity with that of his predecessors. Not only was he crowned at Karnak (temple of the god Amun) but, like his father, he married a lady of non-royal blood, Nefertiti, the daughter of the vizier Ay. Ay seems to have been a brother of Queen Tiy and a son of Yuya and Tuya. Nefertiti's mother is not known; she may have died in c;hildbirth or shortly afterwards, since Nefertiti seems to have been brought up by another wife of Ay named Tey, who would then be her stepmother.
Akhenaten and the cult of the Aten
This was not in itself a new idea: as a relatively minor aspect of the sun god Re-Harakhte, the Aten had been venerated in the Old Kingdom and a large scarab of Akhenaten's grandfather Tuthmosis IV (now in the British Museum) has a text that mentions the Aten. Rather Akhenaten's innovation was to worship the Aten in its own right Portrayed as a solar disc whose protective rays terminated in hands holding the ankh hieroglyph for life, the Aten was accessible only to Akhenaten, thereby obviating the need for an intermediate priesthood.
At first, the king built a temple to his god Aten immediately outside the east gate of the temple of Amun at Karnak, but clearly the coexis tence of the two cults could not last. He therefore proscribed the cult of Amun, closed the god's temples, took over the revenues and, to make a complete break, in Year 6 moved to a new capital in Middle Egypt, half way between Memphis and Thebes. It was a virgin site, not previously dedicated to any other god or goddess, and he named it Akhetaten - The Horizon of the Aten. Today the site is known as el-Amarna.
In the tomb of Ay, the chief minister of Akhenaten (and later to become king after Tutankhamun's death, p. 136), occurs the longest and best rendition of a composition known as the 'Hymn to the Aten', said to have been written by Akhenaten himself. Quite moving in itself as a piece of poetry, its similarity to, and possible source of the concept in, Psalm 104 has long been noted. It sums up the whole ethos of the Aten cult and especially the concept that only Akhenaten had access to the god: 'Thou arisest fair in the horizon of Heaven, 0 Living Aten, Beginner of Life ... there is none who knows thee save thy son Akhenaten. Thou hast made him wise in thy plans and thy power.' No longer did the dead call upon Osiris to guide them through the afterworld, for only through their adherence to the king and his intercession on their behalf could they hope to live beyond the grave.
According to present evidence, however, it appears that it was only the upper echelons of society which embraced the new religion with any fervour (and perhaps that was only skin deep). Excavations at .'Amarna have indicated that even here the old way of religion continued among the ordinary people. On a wider scale, throughout Egypt, the new cult does not seem to have had much effect at a common level except, of course, in dismantling the priesthood and closing the temples; but then the ordinary populace had had little to do with the religious establishment anyway, except on the high days and holidays when the god's statue would be carried in procession from the sanctuary outside the great temple walls.
The standard bureaucracy continued its endeavours to run the country while the king courted his god. Cracks in the Egyptian empire may have begun to appear in the later years of the reign of Amenhotep III; at any rate they became more evident as Akhenaten increasingly left government and diplomats to their own devices. Civil and military authority came under two strong characters: Ay, who held the title 'Father of the God' land was probably Akhenaten's father-in-IawL and the general Horemheb (also Ay's son-in-law since he married Ay's daughter Mutnodjme, sister of Nefertiti). Both men were to become pharaoh before the 18th Dynasty ended. This redoubtable pair of closely related high officials no doubt kept everything under control in a discreet manner while Akhenaten pursued his own philosophical and religious interests.
The new artistic style of Akhenaten
It is evident from the art of the Amarna period that the court officially emulated the king's unusual physical characteristics. Thus individuals such as the young princesses are endowed with elongated skulls and excessive adiposity, while Bek - the Chief Sculptor and Master of Works - portrays himself in the likeness of his king with pendulous breasts and protruding stomach. On a stele now in Berlin Bek states that he was taught by His Majesty and that the court sculptors were instructed to represent what they saw. The result is a realism that breaks away from the rigid formality of earlier official depictions although naturalism is very evident in earlier, unofficial art.
The power behind Akhenaten's throne?
Although the famous bust of Nefertiti in Berlin shows her with an elongated neck, the queen is not subject to quite the same extreme as others in Amarna art, by virtue of being elegantly female. Indeed there are several curious aspects of Nefertiti's representation. early years of Akhenaten's reign, for instance, Nefertiti was an unusually prominent figure in official art, dominating the scenes carved on blocks of the temple to the Aten at Karnak. One such block shows her in the age-old warlike posture of pharaoh grasping captives by the hair and smiting them with a mace - hardly the epitome of the peaceful queen and mother of six daughters. Nefertiti evidently played a far more prominent part in her husband's rule than was the norm.
Tragedy seems to have struck the royal family in about Year 12 with the death in childbirth of Nefertiti's second daughter, Mekytaten, it is probably she who is shown in a relief in the royal tomb with her stricken parents beside her supine body, and a nurse standing nearby holding a baby. The father of the infant was possibly Akhenaten, since he is also known to have married two other daughters, Merytaren (not to be confused with Mekytaten) and Akhesenpaaten (later to Tutankhamun's wife).
Nefertiti appears to have died soon after Year 12, although some suggest that she was disgraced because her name was replaced in several instances by that of her daughter Merytaten, who succeed her as 'Great Royal Wife'. The latter bore a daughter called Merytaten-tasherit (Merytaten the Younger), also possibly fathered by Akhentaten. Merytaten was to become the wife of Smenkhkare, Akhenatten's brief successor. Nefertiti was buried in the royal tomb at Amarna, judging by the evidence of a fragment of an alabaster ushabti figure bearing her cartouch found there in the early 1930s.
Akhetaten (or el-Amarna as it is now known) is an important site because it was occupied neither before nor after its short life as capital under Akhenaten. It is ringed by a natural amphitheater of cliffs on both sides of the Nile and delineated by a series of 15 large stele carved in the rock around its perimeter. On the stele, reliefs show Akhenaten adoring his god in the company of his wife and various of their six daughters, and give instructions that all should be buried within the city's sacred precincts. To this end a royal tomb was cut in a remote wadi situated mid-way between the tombs of the nobbles, now referred to the North and the South tombs.
None of the tombs was ever finished and probably few of them were actually occupied. If they were, loving relatives almost certainly rapidly removed the bodies immediately after the king's death, because of the backlash unleashed against him and his monuments.
The actual city was a linear development along part of the east bank, strentching back not very far into the desert where a number of small sun kiosks were located on the routes to the tombs. A broad thoroughfare, sometimes called the King's Road or Royal Avenue, linked the two ends of the city and was flanked by a series of official builders, including the royal palace (Great Palace), the new style open-air temple to the Aten (the Great Temple), and administrative offices. The Great Palace was probably a ceremonial center rather than a royal residence; the king and his family may have lived in the North Palace.The houses of the upper classes (mainly young nobles who had accompanied the king in his radical move) were arranged on an open plan, not crowded together as is usually found in the ancient Near East. Most were lavish buildings, with pools and gardens. The overall impression was that of a "garden city".
The whole essence of the court and life at Amarna revolved around the king and his god the Aten. Everywhere the royal family appeared they were shown to be under the protection of the Aten's rays. Reliefs in the tombs of the nobles at the site all focused on the king and through him the Aten.
Great scenes covered the walls and continued, unlike earlier and later tomb decoration, from wall to wall. The king, usually accompanied by Nefertiti and a number of their daughters, dominated the walls, normally in scenes showing them proceeding to the temple of the Aten in chariots drawn by spirited and richly caparisoned horses. Small vignettes occur of men drawing water using shadufs (the ancient bucket and wieghted pole method that until recently was a common sight in Egypt, but is now fast disappearing); fat cattle are fed in their byres; blind musicians, their faces beautifully observed, sing the praises of Akhenaten and the Aten. Everything is alive and thriving under Akhenaten's patronage through the beneficence of the Aten.
Akhenaten, Male or Female?
When the tomb of Akhenaten was rediscovered at Amarna in the early 1880s, portraits of the royal couple were at first thought to represent two females, by virtue of Akhenaten's curious androgynous shape. One explanation for the king's unusual figure was that he suffered from a tumour of the pituitary gland, resulting in what is known as frohlich syndrome. Certain well-known effects of this disorder seem to be very evident in representations of Akhenaten; skull malformation; and lantern-like jaw; the head looking over-heavy on an elongated neck; excessive fat in areas that are more indicative of the female form, e.g. around the thighs, buttocks and breasts; and spindly legs. A side-effect of this condition, however, is infertility, and critics have pointed out that Akhenaten would have been unable to father the six daughters with whom he is so frequently shown on the other hand, he could have been struck by the illness at a later stage in his life.
Akhenaten's resting place
Akhenaten died c. 1334, probably in his 16th regnal year. Evidence found by Professor Geoffrey Martin during re-excavation of the royal tomb at Amarna showed that blocking had been put in place in the burial chamber, suggesting that Akhenaten was buried there initially. Others do not believe that the tomb was used, however, in view of the heavily smashed fragments of his sarcophagus and canopic jars r recovered from it, and also the shattered examples of his ushabtis - found not only in the area of the tomb but also by Petrie in the city.
What is almost certain is that his body did not remain at Amarna. A burnt mummy seen outside the royal tomb in the 1880s, and associated with Egyptian jewelry from the tomb (including a small gold finger ring with Nefertiti's cartouch), was probably Coptic, as was other Egyptian jewelry nearby. Akhenaten's adherents would not have left his body to be despoiled by his enemies once his death and the return to orthodoxy unleashed a backlash of destruction. They would have taken it to a place of safety - and where better to hide it than in the old royal burial ground at Thebes where enemies would never dream of seeking it?
Names, Family and Burial of Akhenaten
Akhenaten's Birth name: Amen-hotep (Amon is Pleased)
Also known as: Amenhotpe IV, Amenophis IV (Greek)
Adopted name (year 5) Akh-en-aten (Servant of the Aten)
Akhenaten's throne name: Nefer-kheperu-re (Beautiful are the Manifestations of Ra)
Akhenaten's father: Amenhotep III
Akhenaten's mother: Tiy
Akhenaten's wives: Nefertiti, Merytaten, Kiya, Mekytaten, Ankhesenpaaten
Akhenaten's son: Tutankhamun
Akhenaten's daughters: Merytaten, Mekytaten, Ankhesenpaaten, Merytaten-tasherit and others
Akhenaten's burial: Akhetaten (el-Amarna) subsequently, Valley of the Kings, Thebes.
Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt List
List of Major Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
Amun (alt. Amon)
'The Hidden One', a god of the Theban region who eventually became the principal divinity of the royal lines and the nearest approach to a national god of Egypt. The Temple of Amon in Thebes was one of the most powerful religious foundations, specially in the later periods, eventually threatening the royal power.
Andjeti
A god of the Delta with whom Osiris, who was first associated with the Delta twn of Busiris, was assimilated.
Anbur
A god identified as the creative power of the sun, later recognised as a god of war.
Anubis
A very ancient divinity, originating in Abydos, He is represented as a wolf or jackal; he was associated especially with mummification, the practice of which was the responsibility of his priests.
Apis
A manifestation of Ptah incarnate in a bull with particular markings and physical characteristics, Apis was known in the First Dynasty. His cult became widespread in the Late Period, when the chosen bull (and his mother) were given lives of great luxury in the temple at Memphis and, at death, sumptuous obsequies at Saqqara.
Ash
A god of deserts, of great antiquity, sometimes identified with Set, particularly in the south.
Aten
The personification of the sun's rays, proclaimed by Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) as the supreme god of Egypt. After the king's death Aten was overturned by the priests of Amon, a return to whose worship was demanded by them, signalled by such events as the renaming of King Tutankhaten, Akhenaten's eventual successor, as Tutankhamun.
Atum
'The Undifferentiated One', 'The All', the original creator of the cosmos who, after lying inert in the abyss, appeared on the primordial mound, 'The Divine Emerging Island', to initiate the process of creation. Finding himself alone he masturbated and from his sperm produced the first generation of gods.
Bes
A dwarf god, popular in later times, who was invoked for luck and who facilitated childhirth.
Buchis
A sacred bull, associated with Montu at his cult center at Armant (Hermonthis); the bull was an incarnation of Re and Osiris.
Bastet
A cat goddess, worshipped at Bubastis, a Delta town named in her honour.
Geb
The earth god and father, by the goddess Nut, of Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys. Initially he divided the sovereignty of Egypt between Set and his nephew Horus, gods of the south and north respectively, but eventually gave dominion over the whole land to Horus.
Hapy
The god of the Nile, portrayed with bisexual secondary haracteristics.
Hathor
An ancient cow goddess, associated with Isis, and in whose form queens were frequently depicted.
Heh, Hehet
Frog divinities, representing the element water who, with others of their kind, produce the egg which is placed on the 'Divine Emerging Island'. Heh was also the god of eternity, represented anthropomorphically.
Horakhty
A manifestation of Re as the dawn light appearing on the eastern horizon. In New Kingdom times the Great Sphinx at Giza was thought to be an image of the god Horus and was identified with Horakhty.
Horus
A very ancient sky divinity from the south, the son of Osiris and Isis according to a relatively late myth, who avenged his father's murder by Set, becoming King of Upper and Lower Egypt. All subsequent kings of Egypt were revered as incarnations of Horus. There were many local manifestations of Horus throughout Egypt.
Isis
Sister-wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. Queens were identified with Isis and, especially in the early dynasties, the succession to the throne often passed through the female line by marriage to the heiress. Isis was represented astronomically by the constellation Sirius (Egyptian Sopdet).
Khentiamentiu
An ancient god of the necropolis of Abydos, 'The Foremost of the Westerners' with whom Osiris was assimilated and whose form, swathed in mummy cloths, he adopted. Like Anubis, with whom Khentiamcntiu shares a number of attributes, he is also manifest as a dog or jackal.
Khepri (alt. Kheper)
The scarabeus beetle which was regarded as the manifestation of the sun god. Its practice of laying its eggs in a ball of dung came to symbolise regeneration, and the hieroglyph derived from it signified 'becoming'.
Khnum
The ram-headed god of Elephantine who was responsible for fashioning the Ka of the royal child at the moment of conception, on his potter's wheel.
Ma'at
Truth, divine order; the goddess in whose name the king was said to rule, and by whom he was bound to rule justly.
Mefnut
A lioness goddess.
Mertsager
A snake goddess, revered as the 'Lady of the Pek ' and associated with the pyramid-shaped mountain which rises over the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. Her name means 'She who Loves Silence'.
Meshkent
The goddess of childbirth.
Min
'Lord of Copros', often represented as thongh one-armed and usually ithyphallic.
Mnevis
A god who manifested his presence in a selected bull (see also Apis, Buchis).
Montu
A warrior-god of the Theban region, manifest both as a falcon and as a bull. Montu was particularly reverenced by the kings of the Eleventh Dynasty, eventually being replaced by the ram of Amon as the principal divinity of the Thebaid.
Mut
A lioness-headed goddess whose temple was located at Asher (Thebes). She was sometimes represented as vulture-headed.
Nefertum
Horus as a child, born in the lotus flower and associated with the sun god.
Neith
An ancient warrior-goddess, resident in Sais in northern Egypt. From very early times she was symbolised by a device of crossed arrows.
Nekhbet
The vulture goddess of Nekhen in Upper Egypt and patron goddess of the south, one of 'the Two Ladies', with Uadjet whose power protected the king. Some kings and a number of queens wore the double Uraeus of vulture and cobra.
Nephthys
One of the Heliopolitan Ogdoud, the company of eight primeval gods, the daughter of Geb and the consort of Set.
Nun
The personification of the primeval waters, the abyss, from which the earliest generations of gods were born. At night the sun journeyed to Nun on its voyage through the Underworld.
Nut
The sky goddess whose body symbolised the vault of the heavens. Every evening she swallowed the sun, Re, and every morning gave birth to him. She is trequently represented in the decoration of coffins.
Osiris
The ruler of the Underworld, identified with the king-in-death, who became Osiris. He was the father of Horus who avenged his murder by his brother Set. Osiris was regenerated that he might impregnate Isis; as a consequence he came to be worshipped as the god of rebirth and redemption. In time all the 'justified'
dead became Osiris.
Ptah
The immensely ancient artificer god, Lord of Memphis, where his principal temple was established and hence especially identified with the royal house. He is depicted in human form, though wrapped in mummy cloths. He could also manifest himself in animal form, for example as a bull like Apis, Buchis or Mnevis.
Ptah-Soker-Osiris
A manifestation of Ptah combined with Osiris, particularly important in the region of Saqqara. Later Ptah-Soker-Osir is became transformed into the Graeco Fgyptian god Serapis, one of the archetypes of the bearded, patriarchal sky god.
Re (alt. Ra)
The sun god, from time to time regarded as the king of the gods, with whom the king was united at death.
Sekhmet
A lioness goddess, the consort of Ptah, she roamed the desert outside Giza. Because of an injury done to the eye of Re, her father, she determined to destroy the race of men and was only prevented from doing so by the subterfuge of making her drunk, so that she became unconscious and was carried back to heaven.
Selket
A scorpion-goddess who protected the coffin of the king.
Seshat
An ancient goddess, charged with responsibility for preparing all the divine records, hence for writing, architecture, the measuring of land on which a temple was to be built and, with the king, for determining the temple's axis.
Set (alt. Seth)
Originally the high god of the south of Egypt, Set became a god of deserts, of the storm and chaos. Later, he was regarded as the murderer of his brother, Osiris, and the antagonist of Osiris' heir, Horus. Their conflict over the kingship of Egypt is one of the archetypal themes of Ancient Egypt.
Shesemuw
A god of wine and of the vintage, who also presided over the butchering of bulls.
Shu
The god of air and the sun; he was particularly associated with Heliopolis. He was said to be one of the first two divinities created by Atum.
Sobek
A crocodile-god, worshipped at Kom Ombo, who was especially popular in the Thirteenth Dynasty, when a number of the kings adopted Sobek's name as part of their titulary.
Soker
A god of the dead of Memphis; he was associated in late times with Osiris and Ptah to form the composite divinity Ptah-Soker-Osiris.
Taurt
A hippopotamus goddess, represented standing upright on her rear legs, who was particularly concerned with the supervision of pregnancy and childbirth.
Tefnut
A form of the lioness-goddess Sekhmet.
Thoth
The god of wisdom and the moon who was manifest both as an ibis and as a cynocephalus baboon. It was him who brought the arts of civilization to men.
'The Two Ladies'
The godesses Nekhbet and Uadjet.
Uadjet
The cobra-goddess of the north, the partner of Nekhbet who with her protected the king as part of his Uraeus diadem, sometimes forming with Nekhbet the double uraeus.
Wepwawet (alt. Upwaut)
A dog-god from Abydos, associated with graveyards. His name signifies 'Opener of the Ways' and it was believed that he conducted the dead to judgement.
Amun (alt. Amon)
'The Hidden One', a god of the Theban region who eventually became the principal divinity of the royal lines and the nearest approach to a national god of Egypt. The Temple of Amon in Thebes was one of the most powerful religious foundations, specially in the later periods, eventually threatening the royal power.
Andjeti
A god of the Delta with whom Osiris, who was first associated with the Delta twn of Busiris, was assimilated.
Anbur
A god identified as the creative power of the sun, later recognised as a god of war.
Anubis
A very ancient divinity, originating in Abydos, He is represented as a wolf or jackal; he was associated especially with mummification, the practice of which was the responsibility of his priests.
Apis
A manifestation of Ptah incarnate in a bull with particular markings and physical characteristics, Apis was known in the First Dynasty. His cult became widespread in the Late Period, when the chosen bull (and his mother) were given lives of great luxury in the temple at Memphis and, at death, sumptuous obsequies at Saqqara.
Ash
A god of deserts, of great antiquity, sometimes identified with Set, particularly in the south.
Aten
The personification of the sun's rays, proclaimed by Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) as the supreme god of Egypt. After the king's death Aten was overturned by the priests of Amon, a return to whose worship was demanded by them, signalled by such events as the renaming of King Tutankhaten, Akhenaten's eventual successor, as Tutankhamun.
Atum
'The Undifferentiated One', 'The All', the original creator of the cosmos who, after lying inert in the abyss, appeared on the primordial mound, 'The Divine Emerging Island', to initiate the process of creation. Finding himself alone he masturbated and from his sperm produced the first generation of gods.
Bes
A dwarf god, popular in later times, who was invoked for luck and who facilitated childhirth.
Buchis
A sacred bull, associated with Montu at his cult center at Armant (Hermonthis); the bull was an incarnation of Re and Osiris.
Bastet
A cat goddess, worshipped at Bubastis, a Delta town named in her honour.
Geb
The earth god and father, by the goddess Nut, of Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys. Initially he divided the sovereignty of Egypt between Set and his nephew Horus, gods of the south and north respectively, but eventually gave dominion over the whole land to Horus.
Hapy
The god of the Nile, portrayed with bisexual secondary haracteristics.
Hathor
An ancient cow goddess, associated with Isis, and in whose form queens were frequently depicted.
Heh, Hehet
Frog divinities, representing the element water who, with others of their kind, produce the egg which is placed on the 'Divine Emerging Island'. Heh was also the god of eternity, represented anthropomorphically.
Horakhty
A manifestation of Re as the dawn light appearing on the eastern horizon. In New Kingdom times the Great Sphinx at Giza was thought to be an image of the god Horus and was identified with Horakhty.
Horus
A very ancient sky divinity from the south, the son of Osiris and Isis according to a relatively late myth, who avenged his father's murder by Set, becoming King of Upper and Lower Egypt. All subsequent kings of Egypt were revered as incarnations of Horus. There were many local manifestations of Horus throughout Egypt.
Isis
Sister-wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. Queens were identified with Isis and, especially in the early dynasties, the succession to the throne often passed through the female line by marriage to the heiress. Isis was represented astronomically by the constellation Sirius (Egyptian Sopdet).
Khentiamentiu
An ancient god of the necropolis of Abydos, 'The Foremost of the Westerners' with whom Osiris was assimilated and whose form, swathed in mummy cloths, he adopted. Like Anubis, with whom Khentiamcntiu shares a number of attributes, he is also manifest as a dog or jackal.
Khepri (alt. Kheper)
The scarabeus beetle which was regarded as the manifestation of the sun god. Its practice of laying its eggs in a ball of dung came to symbolise regeneration, and the hieroglyph derived from it signified 'becoming'.
Khnum
The ram-headed god of Elephantine who was responsible for fashioning the Ka of the royal child at the moment of conception, on his potter's wheel.
Ma'at
Truth, divine order; the goddess in whose name the king was said to rule, and by whom he was bound to rule justly.
Mefnut
A lioness goddess.
Mertsager
A snake goddess, revered as the 'Lady of the Pek ' and associated with the pyramid-shaped mountain which rises over the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. Her name means 'She who Loves Silence'.
Meshkent
The goddess of childbirth.
Min
'Lord of Copros', often represented as thongh one-armed and usually ithyphallic.
Mnevis
A god who manifested his presence in a selected bull (see also Apis, Buchis).
Montu
A warrior-god of the Theban region, manifest both as a falcon and as a bull. Montu was particularly reverenced by the kings of the Eleventh Dynasty, eventually being replaced by the ram of Amon as the principal divinity of the Thebaid.
Mut
A lioness-headed goddess whose temple was located at Asher (Thebes). She was sometimes represented as vulture-headed.
Nefertum
Horus as a child, born in the lotus flower and associated with the sun god.
Neith
An ancient warrior-goddess, resident in Sais in northern Egypt. From very early times she was symbolised by a device of crossed arrows.
Nekhbet
The vulture goddess of Nekhen in Upper Egypt and patron goddess of the south, one of 'the Two Ladies', with Uadjet whose power protected the king. Some kings and a number of queens wore the double Uraeus of vulture and cobra.
Nephthys
One of the Heliopolitan Ogdoud, the company of eight primeval gods, the daughter of Geb and the consort of Set.
Nun
The personification of the primeval waters, the abyss, from which the earliest generations of gods were born. At night the sun journeyed to Nun on its voyage through the Underworld.
Nut
The sky goddess whose body symbolised the vault of the heavens. Every evening she swallowed the sun, Re, and every morning gave birth to him. She is trequently represented in the decoration of coffins.
Osiris
The ruler of the Underworld, identified with the king-in-death, who became Osiris. He was the father of Horus who avenged his murder by his brother Set. Osiris was regenerated that he might impregnate Isis; as a consequence he came to be worshipped as the god of rebirth and redemption. In time all the 'justified'
dead became Osiris.
Ptah
The immensely ancient artificer god, Lord of Memphis, where his principal temple was established and hence especially identified with the royal house. He is depicted in human form, though wrapped in mummy cloths. He could also manifest himself in animal form, for example as a bull like Apis, Buchis or Mnevis.
Ptah-Soker-Osiris
A manifestation of Ptah combined with Osiris, particularly important in the region of Saqqara. Later Ptah-Soker-Osir is became transformed into the Graeco Fgyptian god Serapis, one of the archetypes of the bearded, patriarchal sky god.
Re (alt. Ra)
The sun god, from time to time regarded as the king of the gods, with whom the king was united at death.
Sekhmet
A lioness goddess, the consort of Ptah, she roamed the desert outside Giza. Because of an injury done to the eye of Re, her father, she determined to destroy the race of men and was only prevented from doing so by the subterfuge of making her drunk, so that she became unconscious and was carried back to heaven.
Selket
A scorpion-goddess who protected the coffin of the king.
Seshat
An ancient goddess, charged with responsibility for preparing all the divine records, hence for writing, architecture, the measuring of land on which a temple was to be built and, with the king, for determining the temple's axis.
Set (alt. Seth)
Originally the high god of the south of Egypt, Set became a god of deserts, of the storm and chaos. Later, he was regarded as the murderer of his brother, Osiris, and the antagonist of Osiris' heir, Horus. Their conflict over the kingship of Egypt is one of the archetypal themes of Ancient Egypt.
Shesemuw
A god of wine and of the vintage, who also presided over the butchering of bulls.
Shu
The god of air and the sun; he was particularly associated with Heliopolis. He was said to be one of the first two divinities created by Atum.
Sobek
A crocodile-god, worshipped at Kom Ombo, who was especially popular in the Thirteenth Dynasty, when a number of the kings adopted Sobek's name as part of their titulary.
Soker
A god of the dead of Memphis; he was associated in late times with Osiris and Ptah to form the composite divinity Ptah-Soker-Osiris.
Taurt
A hippopotamus goddess, represented standing upright on her rear legs, who was particularly concerned with the supervision of pregnancy and childbirth.
Tefnut
A form of the lioness-goddess Sekhmet.
Thoth
The god of wisdom and the moon who was manifest both as an ibis and as a cynocephalus baboon. It was him who brought the arts of civilization to men.
'The Two Ladies'
The godesses Nekhbet and Uadjet.
Uadjet
The cobra-goddess of the north, the partner of Nekhbet who with her protected the king as part of his Uraeus diadem, sometimes forming with Nekhbet the double uraeus.
Wepwawet (alt. Upwaut)
A dog-god from Abydos, associated with graveyards. His name signifies 'Opener of the Ways' and it was believed that he conducted the dead to judgement.
Egypt : Akhenaten Temple Project - Karnak Complex Part XII
Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :
What is now known as the Akhenaten Temple Project was originally undertaken by the University Museum of Pennsylvania. Now it is subsidized in part by the Antiquities Department and in part by the Smithsonian Institution, and is the first scientific study of antiquities by computer. It entails the extraction of the blocks and the feeding of details of their design, inscriptions, etc. into a computer, which will match the pieces and prepare the way for reconstruction. Modem techniques may thus concentrate a lifetime's work into a decade. The question is whether the blocks will prove to be parts of one immense temple, a worthy companion to the temple of Amon,or a complex of many.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Akhenaten Temple Project is one of the most important pieces of work being done in Luxor today. To date there is a gap in the history of the area. Only in the tomb of Ramose is there an opportunity to compare the age-old tradition of artistic expression with the new . realism characteristic of Akhenaten's time. What a drama when, within the very precincts of Amon's sacred temple where he enjoyed unquestioned dominance for generations, there will rise a structure from a period meant to have been forever forgotten. Side by side with Amon's power and supremacy will be Akhenaten's new faith and symbol , the sun, with its radiating force ending in the gesture of giving.
The eastern avenue of sphinxes extends from the tenth pylon to the Gate of Philadelphus, which is excellently preserved. The temple of Mut is to the south. To the west is the temple of Khonsu and the temple of Osiris adjoins it.
Egypt : Southern Buildings, Karnak Cachette, Seventh to Tenth Pylons - Karnak Complex part XI
Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :
The buildings extending southwards from the central court of the main temple of Karnak are mostly in ruin today. A brief survey will be made, however, to show the importance of the plan of reconstruction over the next ten years. A group of architects arc under contract with the Department of Antiquities for the complete reconstruction of the Karnak area, of which this is only one section, but perhaps the most important.Proceeding from the central court (lying between the third and fourth pylons) are the remains of a court where there is a good view of Ramses II's famous treaty with the Hittites, followed by the seventh pylon. This court was the site of a temple of the Middle Kingdom and it was here that Legrain extracted a fantastic number of works of art from what became known as the Karnak Cachette. Buried in a pit were thousands of pieces including statues in stone and bronze, sphinxes and sacred animals. The bronze items alone numbered 17,000. It seems that one of the Pharaohs decided to have a spring clean in the temple and remove all the junk. Though most of the pieces are of little artistic merit, the find shows that the temple could well have housed the 86,486 statues mentioned in the Great Harris Papyrus. The seventh pylon was built by Thutmose III, and facing it to the south are the remains of two colossal statues of him in red granite. Between the wall suniting the seventh and eighth pylons, to the east, is as mall shrine dating also from the reign of Thutmose III. The eighth pylon was the work of Queen Hatshepsut and is the most ancient part of the structure. In fact there is very little proof of her having built this pylon, for her name was removed from the reliefs by Thutmose II. And following Akhenaten's removal of all allusions to Amon, Seti I restored them, often inserting his own name in place of those of the older rulers. Reconstruction of this area may yet supply the missing clues to the overlapping reigns of the Thutmosides.
In the doorway at the rear left-hand of this court is an important historical relief on the left. It is the first instance in Egypt's long history where the high priest, in this case Amenhotep, is depicted in the same size as the Pharaoh. Standing with arms up lifted, Amenhotep offers flowers to Ramses IX. This relief indicates the growth of priestly power. Faithful traditionalists of the established religion, the priests of Amon had hitherto been righteous, just and devout. The power of leadership had been firmly vested in the throne and they had recognized and accepted this. Over the years however their simple piety had turned to mild interest in earthly matters, then acute interest, and finally to intrigue and a craving for political power. The high priest depicted in this mural makes offerings to the Pharaoh while being draped in linen by two servants. A reciprocal gesture of appreciation? Or a royal bribe?
Beyond the eighth pylon is a row of six royal personages. The best preserved are Amenhotep I (in limestone) and Thutmose II (inredgranite), both to the west. The ninth pylon was built by Harmhab the one-time general. When repairs started it was found to be filled, like its companion the tenth pylon, with blocks from Akhenaten's temple to the Sun. Together with the 40,000-odd blocks from this same period found beneath the hypostyle hall and the second pylon, these number some 60,000 blocks and are valuable clues to a period about which there are many gaps in our knowledge. When the first small,distinctively uniform sand stone blocks were discovered in the pylon of Ramses II, it was at first erroneously assumed that they had been brought lip-river from a dismantled temple in Tel eI Amarna, Drain age operations subsequently led to the excavation of parts of no less than seventeen colossal statues of Akhenaten himself. Akhenaten in fact had had the temple erected before he changed his capital to Tel eI Amarna and while Thebes was witnessing the slow indoctrination of a new religious concept.
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Showing posts with label Akhenaten. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Akhenaten. Show all posts
$1.38: Postcard of Akhenaten Praising the Solar God Aten.
A postcard with Akhenaten scene with the Solar god, Aten.
This postcard is
- 5.6X4.25 inches
- Made of ultra-heavyweight paper (120lb.) with a gloss finish.
- Only $1.38 with no minimum order.
Buy now from my Zazzle store.
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Playing Cards with Scene of Akhenaten Worshiping Aten - $25.00
With the famous scene of ancient Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten worshiping his famous Solar god, Aten.
These 50 playing cards with 2 jokers can make a great gift.
They are available in 11 different styles.
They are:
- Easy to shuffle, durable semi-gloss cards.
- 52 playing cards and 2 Jokers per deck.
- Comes with standard Bicycle cardboard case.
- Made in Kansas City, Kansas.
A Mousepad of Akhenaten Praising Aten - $15.00
Get this mousepad and show love and support to the great ancient Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, his wife Nefertiti and their brand new religion.The mousepad is:
- 9.25" x 7.75"
- Quality, full-color printing.
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Amarna - The Sacred City of Akhetaten
What is Akhetaten / el-Amarna?
Akhetaten (or el-Amarna, as it is called now), is a city that was built by the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. Akhenaten and his beautiful wife Nefertiti founded a new monotheist religion and they wanted to convert the country somehow, but they realized that the power of Thebes and its priests is very challenging, so they wanted to move the capital to a new city, thus Akhetaten was founded, for the sole purpose of praising the new monotheist god, Aten.
What makes Akhetaten unique is the fact that the spot wasn't occupied before the city was built, and was abandoned right after the city's short life as a capital.
Posters of el-Amarna/Akhetaten.
There are a few posters taken from the actual site of el-Amarna. They are available online if you want to buy one of them. If you click on one of these pictures, you will be taken to a page where you will find the price and the details of each picture, the sizes and prices vary, but basically, the average size is 18 x 24 inches. A good idea if you want to hang them on your wall. Let's take a look:
Books about el-Amarna:
Though el-Amarna city had a very short life, it represents a very important era of ancient Egypt history, many books were completely dedicated just for that city and the innovation it represented both on the spiritual and architectural sides.
Please note that the last book "Amarna Sunset" takes on the ending of el-Amarna period and the restoration of the old Theban way of life. It is still very interesting, though.
Meritaten
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| Relief showing Royal couple, usually identified as Meritaten and her husband and half-brother Smenkhkare (but occasionally identified as Akhenaten and Nefertiti). The piece is of unconfirmed provenance, but is believed to have come from a private Amarna house. The queen is offering a bouquet to her husband. |
For a long time Egyptologists believed that Meritaten must have married her father. Now, with smenkhare recognized as a real, male heir to the throne, it seems clear that she married her half-brother as he became co-regent to his father Akhenaten. The Amarna tomb of Meryre II provides us with a glimpse of the new royal couple. On the south and east walls of the main chamber we see Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters; these walls were clearly carved before death tore the original Amarna family apart. The unfinished image on the north wall shows a king and queen standing beneath the rays of the Aten. The figures of the royal couple look like Akhenaten and Nefertiti but their recorded cartouches belong to 'King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Ankhkeprure son of Re, Smenkhkare' and the 'King's Great Wife Meritaten'. Unfortunately the king's cartouche has since been hacked off the wall by theives and is now lost.
Two unexplained princesses, Meritaten the Younger and Ankhesenpaaten the Younger, who appear at this time may well be daughters born to Meritaten and Smenkhkare (alternatively, they may be daughters born to Kiya and Akhenaten). But when Smenkhkare died after the briefest of reigns, most if not all of which had been spent ruling alongside his father Akhenaten, he left no male heir. After a possible brief and ill-documented period of rule by the otherwise unknown female king Neferneferuaten (Meritaten?), Smenkhkare was succeeded by his young brother Tutankhaten (re-named Tutankhamun) and his sister-consort, Ankhesenpaaten (Ankhesenamun). Meritaten, dis placed by her sister, vanished; her body has never been found.
Amenhotep III. 18th Dynasty
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(18th Dynasty, part XIII)
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(18th Dynasty, part XIII)
Amenhotep III's long reign of almost 40 years was one of the most prosperous and stable in Egyptian history. His great-grandfather, Tuthmosis III, had laid the foundations of the Egyptian empire by his campaigns into Syria, Nubia and Libya. Hardly any military activity was called for under Amenhotep III, and such little as there was, in Nubia, was directed by his son and viceroy of Kush, Merymose.
Amenhotep III was the son of Tuthmosis IV by one of his chief wives, Queen Mutemwiya. It is possible [though now doubted by some) that she was the daughter of the Mitannian king, Artatama, sent to the Egyptian court as part of a diplomatic arrangement to cement the alliance between the strong militarist state of Mitanni in Syria and
Egypt. The king's royal birth is depicted in a series of reliefs in a room on the east side of the temple of Luxor which Amenhotep III built for Amon. The creator god, the ramheaded Khnum of Elephantine, is seen fashioning the young king and his ka (spirit double) on a potter's wheel, watched by the goddess Isis. The god Amun is then led to his meeting with the queen by ibis-headed Thoth, god of wisdom. Subsequently, Amun is shown standing in the presence of the goddesses Hathor and Mut and nursing the child created by Khnum.
Amenhotep III was the son of Tuthmosis IV by one of his chief wives, Queen Mutemwiya. It is possible [though now doubted by some) that she was the daughter of the Mitannian king, Artatama, sent to the Egyptian court as part of a diplomatic arrangement to cement the alliance between the strong militarist state of Mitanni in Syria and
Egypt. The king's royal birth is depicted in a series of reliefs in a room on the east side of the temple of Luxor which Amenhotep III built for Amon. The creator god, the ramheaded Khnum of Elephantine, is seen fashioning the young king and his ka (spirit double) on a potter's wheel, watched by the goddess Isis. The god Amun is then led to his meeting with the queen by ibis-headed Thoth, god of wisdom. Subsequently, Amun is shown standing in the presence of the goddesses Hathor and Mut and nursing the child created by Khnum.
The early years of Amenhotep III
Amenhotep III's reign falls essentially into two unequal parts. The first decade reflected a young and vigorous king, promoting the sportsman image laid down by his predecessors and with some minor military activity. In Year 5 there was an expedition to Nubia, recorded on rock inscriptions near Aswan and at Konosso in Nubia. Although couched in the usual laudatory manner, the event recorded seems to have been rather low key. An undated stele from Semna (now in the British Museum) also records a Nubian campaign, but whether it is the same one or a later one is uncertain. A rebellion at Ibhet is reported as having been heavily crushed by the viceroy of Nubia, "King's Son of Kush", Merymose. Although the king, 'mighty bull, strong in might, the fierce-eyed lion' is noted as having made great slaughter within the space of a single hour, he was probably not present; nevertheless, 150 Nubian men, 250 women, 175 children, 110 archers, and 55 servan a total of 740 - were said to have been captured, to which was added the 312 right hands of the slain.
Amenhotep III's reign falls essentially into two unequal parts. The first decade reflected a young and vigorous king, promoting the sportsman image laid down by his predecessors and with some minor military activity. In Year 5 there was an expedition to Nubia, recorded on rock inscriptions near Aswan and at Konosso in Nubia. Although couched in the usual laudatory manner, the event recorded seems to have been rather low key. An undated stele from Semna (now in the British Museum) also records a Nubian campaign, but whether it is the same one or a later one is uncertain. A rebellion at Ibhet is reported as having been heavily crushed by the viceroy of Nubia, "King's Son of Kush", Merymose. Although the king, 'mighty bull, strong in might, the fierce-eyed lion' is noted as having made great slaughter within the space of a single hour, he was probably not present; nevertheless, 150 Nubian men, 250 women, 175 children, 110 archers, and 55 servan a total of 740 - were said to have been captured, to which was added the 312 right hands of the slain.
The opulent years of Amenhotep III
The last 25 years of Amenhotep III's reign seem to have been a period of great building works and luxury at court and in the arts. The laudatory epithets that accompany the king's name are more grandiose metaphen than records of fact: he took the Horus name 'Great of Strength who Smites the Asiatics', when there is little evidence of such a campaign, similarly, 'Plunderer of Shinar' and 'Crusher of Naharin' seem singularly inappropriate, particularly the latter since one of his wives, Gilukhepa, was a princess of Naharin.
The last 25 years of Amenhotep III's reign seem to have been a period of great building works and luxury at court and in the arts. The laudatory epithets that accompany the king's name are more grandiose metaphen than records of fact: he took the Horus name 'Great of Strength who Smites the Asiatics', when there is little evidence of such a campaign, similarly, 'Plunderer of Shinar' and 'Crusher of Naharin' seem singularly inappropriate, particularly the latter since one of his wives, Gilukhepa, was a princess of Naharin.
The wealth of Egypt at this period came not from the spoils of conquest, as it had under Tuthmosis III, but from international trade and an abundant supply of gold (from mines in the Wadi Hammamat and from panning gold dust far south into the land of Kush). It was this great wealth and booming economy that led to such an outpouring of artistic talent in all aspects of the arts.
Since the houses or palaces of the living were regarded as ephemeral, we unfortunately have little evidence of the magnificence of a palace such as Amenhotep's Malkata palace. Fragments of the building, however, indicate that the walls were once plastered and painted with lively scenes from nature. Many of the temples he built have been destroyed too. At Karnak he embellished the already large temple to Amun and at Luxor he built a new one to the same god, of which the still standing colonnaded court is a masterpiece of elegance and design. Particular credit is owed to his master architect: Amenhotep son of Hapu.
On the west bank, his mortuary temple was destroyed in the next (19th) dynasty when it, like many of its predecessors, was used as a quarry. All that now remains of this temple are the two imposing statues of the king known as the Colossi of Memnon. (This is in fact a complete misnomer, arising from the classical recognition of the statues as the Ethiopian prince, Memnon, who fought at Troy.) Of the two, the southern statue is the best preserved. Standing beside the king's legs, dwarfed by his stature, are the two important women in his life: his mother Mutemwiya and his wife, Queen Tiy. A quarter of a mile behind the Colossi stands a great repaired stele that was once in the sanctuary and around are fragments of sculptures, the best of which, lying in a pit and found in recent years, is a crocodile-tailed sphinx.
Since the houses or palaces of the living were regarded as ephemeral, we unfortunately have little evidence of the magnificence of a palace such as Amenhotep's Malkata palace. Fragments of the building, however, indicate that the walls were once plastered and painted with lively scenes from nature. Many of the temples he built have been destroyed too. At Karnak he embellished the already large temple to Amun and at Luxor he built a new one to the same god, of which the still standing colonnaded court is a masterpiece of elegance and design. Particular credit is owed to his master architect: Amenhotep son of Hapu.
On the west bank, his mortuary temple was destroyed in the next (19th) dynasty when it, like many of its predecessors, was used as a quarry. All that now remains of this temple are the two imposing statues of the king known as the Colossi of Memnon. (This is in fact a complete misnomer, arising from the classical recognition of the statues as the Ethiopian prince, Memnon, who fought at Troy.) Of the two, the southern statue is the best preserved. Standing beside the king's legs, dwarfed by his stature, are the two important women in his life: his mother Mutemwiya and his wife, Queen Tiy. A quarter of a mile behind the Colossi stands a great repaired stele that was once in the sanctuary and around are fragments of sculptures, the best of which, lying in a pit and found in recent years, is a crocodile-tailed sphinx.
A peak of artistic achievement of Amenhotep III
Some magnificent statuary dates from the reign of Amenhotep III such as the two outstanding couchant rose granite lions originally set before the temple at Soleb in Nubia (but subsequently removed to the temple at Gebel Barlzal further south in the Sudan). There is also a proliferation of private statues, particularly of the architect Amenhotep son of Hapu, but also of many other nobles and dignitaries.
It is in the great series of royal portraits, however, that the sculptor's art is truly seen. Largest of them all (after the Colossi of Memnon) is the huge limestone statue of the king and queen with three small standing princesses from Medinet Habu. There are many other representations of the king, all of which project the contemplative, almost ethereal, aspect of the king's features. Magnificently worked black granite seated statues of Amenhotep wearing the nemes headdress have come from excavations behind the Colossi of Memnon (by Belzoni) and from Tanis in the Delta. A number of statues of the king were reworked by later rulers, often by simply adding their cartouches, or occasionally altering the features or aspects of the body, as with the huge red granite head hitherto identified as being Tuthmosis III from Karnak (also found by Belzoni) and reworked by Ramesses II [now in the British Museum). Several portraits in statues, reliefs and wall paintings show the king wearing the helmet-like khepresh, the so-called Blue or War Crown.
One of the most incredible finds of statuary in recent years was made in the courtyard of the Amenhotep III colonnade of the Luxor temple in 1989. It included a superb 6-ft (1.83-m) high pink quartzite statue of the king standing on a sledge and wearing the Double Crown. The only damage the statue had sustained was under Akhenaten when, very carefully, the hated name of Amon was removed from the cartouch when it appeared as part of the king's name. The inscriptions on the statue and its iconography suggest that it is a work from late in the despite the idealized youthful features of the king. It may possibly have been a cult statue.
Some magnificent statuary dates from the reign of Amenhotep III such as the two outstanding couchant rose granite lions originally set before the temple at Soleb in Nubia (but subsequently removed to the temple at Gebel Barlzal further south in the Sudan). There is also a proliferation of private statues, particularly of the architect Amenhotep son of Hapu, but also of many other nobles and dignitaries.
It is in the great series of royal portraits, however, that the sculptor's art is truly seen. Largest of them all (after the Colossi of Memnon) is the huge limestone statue of the king and queen with three small standing princesses from Medinet Habu. There are many other representations of the king, all of which project the contemplative, almost ethereal, aspect of the king's features. Magnificently worked black granite seated statues of Amenhotep wearing the nemes headdress have come from excavations behind the Colossi of Memnon (by Belzoni) and from Tanis in the Delta. A number of statues of the king were reworked by later rulers, often by simply adding their cartouches, or occasionally altering the features or aspects of the body, as with the huge red granite head hitherto identified as being Tuthmosis III from Karnak (also found by Belzoni) and reworked by Ramesses II [now in the British Museum). Several portraits in statues, reliefs and wall paintings show the king wearing the helmet-like khepresh, the so-called Blue or War Crown.
One of the most incredible finds of statuary in recent years was made in the courtyard of the Amenhotep III colonnade of the Luxor temple in 1989. It included a superb 6-ft (1.83-m) high pink quartzite statue of the king standing on a sledge and wearing the Double Crown. The only damage the statue had sustained was under Akhenaten when, very carefully, the hated name of Amon was removed from the cartouch when it appeared as part of the king's name. The inscriptions on the statue and its iconography suggest that it is a work from late in the despite the idealized youthful features of the king. It may possibly have been a cult statue.
The two most widely known portraits of Queen Tiy are the small ebony head in Berlin which, in the past, caused many authorities to suggest that she came from south of Aswan, and the petite-faced and crowned head found by Petrie at the temple of Serabit el-Khadim in Sinai which is identified as the queen by her cartouch on the front of her crown. Other fine reliefs of her come from the tombs of some of the courtiers in her service such as Userhet (TT 47) and Kheruef (TT 192).
Death and burial of Amenhotep III
Inscribed clay dockets from the Malkata palace carry dates into at least Year 38 of Amenhotep's reign, implying that he may have died in his 39th regnal year when he would have been about 45 years old.
Inscribed clay dockets from the Malkata palace carry dates into at least Year 38 of Amenhotep's reign, implying that he may have died in his 39th regnal year when he would have been about 45 years old.
His robbed tomb was rediscovered by the French expedition in 1799 in the western Valley of the Kings (KV 22). Amongst the debris, they found a large number of ushabtis of the king, some complete but mostly broken, made of black and red granite, alabaster and cedar wood. Some were considerably larger than normal. Excavations and clearance by Howard Carter in 1915 revealed foundation deposits of Tuthmosis IV, showing that the tomb had been originally intended for that king. Despite this, the tomb was eventually used for Amenhotep III, and also for Queen Tiy to judge from the fragments found of several different ushabtis of the queen.
Queen Tiy survived her husband by several years - possibly by as many as 12, since she is shown with her youngest daughter, Beket Aten, in a relief in one of the Amarna tombs that is dated between Years 9 and 12 of her son's reign. (Beket-Aten is shown as a very young child and must have been born shortly before Amenhotep died, or even posthumously.) We know from polite enquiries about Tiy's health in the Amarna Letters (p. 126) that she lived for a while at Akhetaten (modern el-Amarna), the new capital of her son Akhenaten. It has been suggested that there was a period of co-regency between the old king and his successor, but the argument is not proved either way. An interesting painted sandstone stele found in a private household shrine at el-Amarna shows an elderly, rather obese Amenhotep III, seated with Queen Tiy. Whether he actually lived for a time in this city is a matter of conjecture; Tiy certainly did and may well have died there, to be taken back to Thebes for burial.
Amenhotep III's mummy was probably one of those found by Loret in 1898 in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV 35), although recently it has been suggested that this body was wrongly identified by the ancient priests
when it was transferred to the new tomb. On biological grounds, professors Ed Wente and John Harris have proposed it to be the body of Akhenaten, or possibly Ay. A previously unidentified female mummy (the Elder Woman) from the same cache has been tentatively identified as Queen Tiy, based on the examination of her hair and a lock of hair in a small coffin from the tomb of Tutankhamun inscriptionally identified as Tiy's.
Queen Tiy survived her husband by several years - possibly by as many as 12, since she is shown with her youngest daughter, Beket Aten, in a relief in one of the Amarna tombs that is dated between Years 9 and 12 of her son's reign. (Beket-Aten is shown as a very young child and must have been born shortly before Amenhotep died, or even posthumously.) We know from polite enquiries about Tiy's health in the Amarna Letters (p. 126) that she lived for a while at Akhetaten (modern el-Amarna), the new capital of her son Akhenaten. It has been suggested that there was a period of co-regency between the old king and his successor, but the argument is not proved either way. An interesting painted sandstone stele found in a private household shrine at el-Amarna shows an elderly, rather obese Amenhotep III, seated with Queen Tiy. Whether he actually lived for a time in this city is a matter of conjecture; Tiy certainly did and may well have died there, to be taken back to Thebes for burial.
Amenhotep III's mummy was probably one of those found by Loret in 1898 in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV 35), although recently it has been suggested that this body was wrongly identified by the ancient priests
when it was transferred to the new tomb. On biological grounds, professors Ed Wente and John Harris have proposed it to be the body of Akhenaten, or possibly Ay. A previously unidentified female mummy (the Elder Woman) from the same cache has been tentatively identified as Queen Tiy, based on the examination of her hair and a lock of hair in a small coffin from the tomb of Tutankhamun inscriptionally identified as Tiy's.
Amenhotep III Names and Burial
Birth name: Amen-hotep (heqa-waset) (Amun is Pleased, Ruler of Thebes)
Throne name: Nub-maat-re (Lord of Tuth is Ra)
Burial: Tomb KV 22, Valley of the Kings, Thebes
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Tags:
18th Dynasty,
Akhenaten,
Amenhotep III
Akhenaten, Amenhotep IV. 18th Dynasty.
Posters of Akhentaten
You want to show respect and love to the great revolutionary pharaoh Akhenaten? You can get one of these posters to hang on your wall! They are very cheap and they are very beautiful. I believe the average poster size is 18" x 24" (inches). And the average price is $20 to $40 US Dollars. However, prices and sizes will vary, just take a look at these outstanding posters that could bring both your wall and Akhenaten to life!
Just in case you are wondering, the two gray posters with a sun disk, represent the relatively-new revolutionary religion that Akhenaten has created with his wife (Nefertiti, who is also there with him in three of these posters). Akhenaten and Nefertiti have changed the country's religious views into monotheist views. Their god Aten (the sun-disk god) was praised and a new city (called Akhetaten or Amarna) was just built for that cause, and then the capital was moving from Thebes to Akhetaten for a while.
Here are a few posters of Amarna:
Amenhotep IV - better known as Akhenaten, the new name he took early on in his reign - ushered in a revolutionary period in Egypt history. The Amarna Interlude, as it is often called, saw the removal of the seat of government to a short-lived new capital city, Akhetaten (modern el-Amarna, a new book is going to be released in a few weeks, make sure to pre-order it)
, the introduction of a new art style, and the elevation of the cult of the sun disc, the Aten, to pre-eminent status in Egyptian religion. This last heresy in particular was to bring down on Akhenaten and his immediate successors the opprobrium of later kings.
The young prince was at least the second son of Amenhotep III by his chief wife, Tiy: an elder brother, prince Tuthmosis, had died prematurely (strangely, a whip bearing his name was found in Tutankhamun's tomb). There is some controversy over whether or not the old king took his son into partnership on the throne in a co-regency - there are quite strong arguments both for and against. A point in favour of a co-regency is the appearance during the latter years of Amenhotep III's reign of artistic styles that are subsequently seen as part of the 'revolutionary Amarna art introduced by Akhenaten; on the other hand, both traditional' and 'revolutionary' art styles could easily have coexisted during the early years of Akhenaten's reign. At any rate, if there had been a coregency, it would not have been for longer than the short period before the new king assumed his preferred name of Akhenaten ('Servant of the Aten') in Year 5.
The beginning of Akhenaten's reign marked no great discontinuity with that of his predecessors. Not only was he crowned at Karnak (temple of the god Amun) but, like his father, he married a lady of non-royal blood, Nefertiti, the daughter of the vizier Ay. Ay seems to have been a brother of Queen Tiy and a son of Yuya and Tuya. Nefertiti's mother is not known; she may have died in c;hildbirth or shortly afterwards, since Nefertiti seems to have been brought up by another wife of Ay named Tey, who would then be her stepmother.
Akhenaten and the cult of the Aten
There can be httle doubt that the new king was far more of a thinker and philosopher than his forebears. Amenhotep III had recognized the growing power of the priesthood of Amun and had sought to curb it; his son was to take the matter a lot further by introducing a new monotheistic cult of sun-worship that was incarnate in the sun's disc, the Aten.
This was not in itself a new idea: as a relatively minor aspect of the sun god Re-Harakhte, the Aten had been venerated in the Old Kingdom and a large scarab of Akhenaten's grandfather Tuthmosis IV (now in the British Museum) has a text that mentions the Aten. Rather Akhenaten's innovation was to worship the Aten in its own right Portrayed as a solar disc whose protective rays terminated in hands holding the ankh hieroglyph for life, the Aten was accessible only to Akhenaten, thereby obviating the need for an intermediate priesthood.
At first, the king built a temple to his god Aten immediately outside the east gate of the temple of Amun at Karnak, but clearly the coexis tence of the two cults could not last. He therefore proscribed the cult of Amun, closed the god's temples, took over the revenues and, to make a complete break, in Year 6 moved to a new capital in Middle Egypt, half way between Memphis and Thebes. It was a virgin site, not previously dedicated to any other god or goddess, and he named it Akhetaten - The Horizon of the Aten. Today the site is known as el-Amarna.
In the tomb of Ay, the chief minister of Akhenaten (and later to become king after Tutankhamun's death, p. 136), occurs the longest and best rendition of a composition known as the 'Hymn to the Aten', said to have been written by Akhenaten himself. Quite moving in itself as a piece of poetry, its similarity to, and possible source of the concept in, Psalm 104 has long been noted. It sums up the whole ethos of the Aten cult and especially the concept that only Akhenaten had access to the god: 'Thou arisest fair in the horizon of Heaven, 0 Living Aten, Beginner of Life ... there is none who knows thee save thy son Akhenaten. Thou hast made him wise in thy plans and thy power.' No longer did the dead call upon Osiris to guide them through the afterworld, for only through their adherence to the king and his intercession on their behalf could they hope to live beyond the grave.
According to present evidence, however, it appears that it was only the upper echelons of society which embraced the new religion with any fervour (and perhaps that was only skin deep). Excavations at .'Amarna have indicated that even here the old way of religion continued among the ordinary people. On a wider scale, throughout Egypt, the new cult does not seem to have had much effect at a common level except, of course, in dismantling the priesthood and closing the temples; but then the ordinary populace had had little to do with the religious establishment anyway, except on the high days and holidays when the god's statue would be carried in procession from the sanctuary outside the great temple walls.
The standard bureaucracy continued its endeavours to run the country while the king courted his god. Cracks in the Egyptian empire may have begun to appear in the later years of the reign of Amenhotep III; at any rate they became more evident as Akhenaten increasingly left government and diplomats to their own devices. Civil and military authority came under two strong characters: Ay, who held the title 'Father of the God' land was probably Akhenaten's father-in-IawL and the general Horemheb (also Ay's son-in-law since he married Ay's daughter Mutnodjme, sister of Nefertiti). Both men were to become pharaoh before the 18th Dynasty ended. This redoubtable pair of closely related high officials no doubt kept everything under control in a discreet manner while Akhenaten pursued his own philosophical and religious interests.
The new artistic style of Akhenaten
It is evident from the art of the Amarna period that the court officially emulated the king's unusual physical characteristics. Thus individuals such as the young princesses are endowed with elongated skulls and excessive adiposity, while Bek - the Chief Sculptor and Master of Works - portrays himself in the likeness of his king with pendulous breasts and protruding stomach. On a stele now in Berlin Bek states that he was taught by His Majesty and that the court sculptors were instructed to represent what they saw. The result is a realism that breaks away from the rigid formality of earlier official depictions although naturalism is very evident in earlier, unofficial art.
The power behind Akhenaten's throne?
Although the famous bust of Nefertiti in Berlin shows her with an elongated neck, the queen is not subject to quite the same extreme as others in Amarna art, by virtue of being elegantly female. Indeed there are several curious aspects of Nefertiti's representation. early years of Akhenaten's reign, for instance, Nefertiti was an unusually prominent figure in official art, dominating the scenes carved on blocks of the temple to the Aten at Karnak. One such block shows her in the age-old warlike posture of pharaoh grasping captives by the hair and smiting them with a mace - hardly the epitome of the peaceful queen and mother of six daughters. Nefertiti evidently played a far more prominent part in her husband's rule than was the norm.
Tragedy seems to have struck the royal family in about Year 12 with the death in childbirth of Nefertiti's second daughter, Mekytaten, it is probably she who is shown in a relief in the royal tomb with her stricken parents beside her supine body, and a nurse standing nearby holding a baby. The father of the infant was possibly Akhenaten, since he is also known to have married two other daughters, Merytaren (not to be confused with Mekytaten) and Akhesenpaaten (later to Tutankhamun's wife).
Nefertiti appears to have died soon after Year 12, although some suggest that she was disgraced because her name was replaced in several instances by that of her daughter Merytaten, who succeed her as 'Great Royal Wife'. The latter bore a daughter called Merytaten-tasherit (Merytaten the Younger), also possibly fathered by Akhentaten. Merytaten was to become the wife of Smenkhkare, Akhenatten's brief successor. Nefertiti was buried in the royal tomb at Amarna, judging by the evidence of a fragment of an alabaster ushabti figure bearing her cartouch found there in the early 1930s.
Akhetaten (or el-Amarna as it is now known) is an important site because it was occupied neither before nor after its short life as capital under Akhenaten. It is ringed by a natural amphitheater of cliffs on both sides of the Nile and delineated by a series of 15 large stele carved in the rock around its perimeter. On the stele, reliefs show Akhenaten adoring his god in the company of his wife and various of their six daughters, and give instructions that all should be buried within the city's sacred precincts. To this end a royal tomb was cut in a remote wadi situated mid-way between the tombs of the nobbles, now referred to the North and the South tombs.
Akhenaten's resting place
Akhenaten died c. 1334, probably in his 16th regnal year. Evidence found by Professor Geoffrey Martin during re-excavation of the royal tomb at Amarna showed that blocking had been put in place in the burial chamber, suggesting that Akhenaten was buried there initially. Others do not believe that the tomb was used, however, in view of the heavily smashed fragments of his sarcophagus and canopic jars r recovered from it, and also the shattered examples of his ushabtis - found not only in the area of the tomb but also by Petrie in the city.
What is almost certain is that his body did not remain at Amarna. A burnt mummy seen outside the royal tomb in the 1880s, and associated with Egyptian jewelry from the tomb (including a small gold finger ring with Nefertiti's cartouch), was probably Coptic, as was other Egyptian jewelry nearby. Akhenaten's adherents would not have left his body to be despoiled by his enemies once his death and the return to orthodoxy unleashed a backlash of destruction. They would have taken it to a place of safety - and where better to hide it than in the old royal burial ground at Thebes where enemies would never dream of seeking it?
You want to show respect and love to the great revolutionary pharaoh Akhenaten? You can get one of these posters to hang on your wall! They are very cheap and they are very beautiful. I believe the average poster size is 18" x 24" (inches). And the average price is $20 to $40 US Dollars. However, prices and sizes will vary, just take a look at these outstanding posters that could bring both your wall and Akhenaten to life!
Just in case you are wondering, the two gray posters with a sun disk, represent the relatively-new revolutionary religion that Akhenaten has created with his wife (Nefertiti, who is also there with him in three of these posters). Akhenaten and Nefertiti have changed the country's religious views into monotheist views. Their god Aten (the sun-disk god) was praised and a new city (called Akhetaten or Amarna) was just built for that cause, and then the capital was moving from Thebes to Akhetaten for a while.
Here are a few posters of Amarna:
Amenhotep IV - better known as Akhenaten, the new name he took early on in his reign - ushered in a revolutionary period in Egypt history. The Amarna Interlude, as it is often called, saw the removal of the seat of government to a short-lived new capital city, Akhetaten (modern el-Amarna, a new book is going to be released in a few weeks, make sure to pre-order it)
, the introduction of a new art style, and the elevation of the cult of the sun disc, the Aten, to pre-eminent status in Egyptian religion. This last heresy in particular was to bring down on Akhenaten and his immediate successors the opprobrium of later kings.The beginning of Akhenaten's reign marked no great discontinuity with that of his predecessors. Not only was he crowned at Karnak (temple of the god Amun) but, like his father, he married a lady of non-royal blood, Nefertiti, the daughter of the vizier Ay. Ay seems to have been a brother of Queen Tiy and a son of Yuya and Tuya. Nefertiti's mother is not known; she may have died in c;hildbirth or shortly afterwards, since Nefertiti seems to have been brought up by another wife of Ay named Tey, who would then be her stepmother.
Akhenaten and the cult of the Aten
This was not in itself a new idea: as a relatively minor aspect of the sun god Re-Harakhte, the Aten had been venerated in the Old Kingdom and a large scarab of Akhenaten's grandfather Tuthmosis IV (now in the British Museum) has a text that mentions the Aten. Rather Akhenaten's innovation was to worship the Aten in its own right Portrayed as a solar disc whose protective rays terminated in hands holding the ankh hieroglyph for life, the Aten was accessible only to Akhenaten, thereby obviating the need for an intermediate priesthood.
At first, the king built a temple to his god Aten immediately outside the east gate of the temple of Amun at Karnak, but clearly the coexis tence of the two cults could not last. He therefore proscribed the cult of Amun, closed the god's temples, took over the revenues and, to make a complete break, in Year 6 moved to a new capital in Middle Egypt, half way between Memphis and Thebes. It was a virgin site, not previously dedicated to any other god or goddess, and he named it Akhetaten - The Horizon of the Aten. Today the site is known as el-Amarna.
In the tomb of Ay, the chief minister of Akhenaten (and later to become king after Tutankhamun's death, p. 136), occurs the longest and best rendition of a composition known as the 'Hymn to the Aten', said to have been written by Akhenaten himself. Quite moving in itself as a piece of poetry, its similarity to, and possible source of the concept in, Psalm 104 has long been noted. It sums up the whole ethos of the Aten cult and especially the concept that only Akhenaten had access to the god: 'Thou arisest fair in the horizon of Heaven, 0 Living Aten, Beginner of Life ... there is none who knows thee save thy son Akhenaten. Thou hast made him wise in thy plans and thy power.' No longer did the dead call upon Osiris to guide them through the afterworld, for only through their adherence to the king and his intercession on their behalf could they hope to live beyond the grave.
According to present evidence, however, it appears that it was only the upper echelons of society which embraced the new religion with any fervour (and perhaps that was only skin deep). Excavations at .'Amarna have indicated that even here the old way of religion continued among the ordinary people. On a wider scale, throughout Egypt, the new cult does not seem to have had much effect at a common level except, of course, in dismantling the priesthood and closing the temples; but then the ordinary populace had had little to do with the religious establishment anyway, except on the high days and holidays when the god's statue would be carried in procession from the sanctuary outside the great temple walls.
The standard bureaucracy continued its endeavours to run the country while the king courted his god. Cracks in the Egyptian empire may have begun to appear in the later years of the reign of Amenhotep III; at any rate they became more evident as Akhenaten increasingly left government and diplomats to their own devices. Civil and military authority came under two strong characters: Ay, who held the title 'Father of the God' land was probably Akhenaten's father-in-IawL and the general Horemheb (also Ay's son-in-law since he married Ay's daughter Mutnodjme, sister of Nefertiti). Both men were to become pharaoh before the 18th Dynasty ended. This redoubtable pair of closely related high officials no doubt kept everything under control in a discreet manner while Akhenaten pursued his own philosophical and religious interests.
The new artistic style of Akhenaten
It is evident from the art of the Amarna period that the court officially emulated the king's unusual physical characteristics. Thus individuals such as the young princesses are endowed with elongated skulls and excessive adiposity, while Bek - the Chief Sculptor and Master of Works - portrays himself in the likeness of his king with pendulous breasts and protruding stomach. On a stele now in Berlin Bek states that he was taught by His Majesty and that the court sculptors were instructed to represent what they saw. The result is a realism that breaks away from the rigid formality of earlier official depictions although naturalism is very evident in earlier, unofficial art.
The power behind Akhenaten's throne?
Although the famous bust of Nefertiti in Berlin shows her with an elongated neck, the queen is not subject to quite the same extreme as others in Amarna art, by virtue of being elegantly female. Indeed there are several curious aspects of Nefertiti's representation. early years of Akhenaten's reign, for instance, Nefertiti was an unusually prominent figure in official art, dominating the scenes carved on blocks of the temple to the Aten at Karnak. One such block shows her in the age-old warlike posture of pharaoh grasping captives by the hair and smiting them with a mace - hardly the epitome of the peaceful queen and mother of six daughters. Nefertiti evidently played a far more prominent part in her husband's rule than was the norm.
Tragedy seems to have struck the royal family in about Year 12 with the death in childbirth of Nefertiti's second daughter, Mekytaten, it is probably she who is shown in a relief in the royal tomb with her stricken parents beside her supine body, and a nurse standing nearby holding a baby. The father of the infant was possibly Akhenaten, since he is also known to have married two other daughters, Merytaren (not to be confused with Mekytaten) and Akhesenpaaten (later to Tutankhamun's wife).
Nefertiti appears to have died soon after Year 12, although some suggest that she was disgraced because her name was replaced in several instances by that of her daughter Merytaten, who succeed her as 'Great Royal Wife'. The latter bore a daughter called Merytaten-tasherit (Merytaten the Younger), also possibly fathered by Akhentaten. Merytaten was to become the wife of Smenkhkare, Akhenatten's brief successor. Nefertiti was buried in the royal tomb at Amarna, judging by the evidence of a fragment of an alabaster ushabti figure bearing her cartouch found there in the early 1930s.
Akhetaten (or el-Amarna as it is now known) is an important site because it was occupied neither before nor after its short life as capital under Akhenaten. It is ringed by a natural amphitheater of cliffs on both sides of the Nile and delineated by a series of 15 large stele carved in the rock around its perimeter. On the stele, reliefs show Akhenaten adoring his god in the company of his wife and various of their six daughters, and give instructions that all should be buried within the city's sacred precincts. To this end a royal tomb was cut in a remote wadi situated mid-way between the tombs of the nobbles, now referred to the North and the South tombs.
None of the tombs was ever finished and probably few of them were actually occupied. If they were, loving relatives almost certainly rapidly removed the bodies immediately after the king's death, because of the backlash unleashed against him and his monuments.
The actual city was a linear development along part of the east bank, strentching back not very far into the desert where a number of small sun kiosks were located on the routes to the tombs. A broad thoroughfare, sometimes called the King's Road or Royal Avenue, linked the two ends of the city and was flanked by a series of official builders, including the royal palace (Great Palace), the new style open-air temple to the Aten (the Great Temple), and administrative offices. The Great Palace was probably a ceremonial center rather than a royal residence; the king and his family may have lived in the North Palace.The houses of the upper classes (mainly young nobles who had accompanied the king in his radical move) were arranged on an open plan, not crowded together as is usually found in the ancient Near East. Most were lavish buildings, with pools and gardens. The overall impression was that of a "garden city".
The whole essence of the court and life at Amarna revolved around the king and his god the Aten. Everywhere the royal family appeared they were shown to be under the protection of the Aten's rays. Reliefs in the tombs of the nobles at the site all focused on the king and through him the Aten.
Great scenes covered the walls and continued, unlike earlier and later tomb decoration, from wall to wall. The king, usually accompanied by Nefertiti and a number of their daughters, dominated the walls, normally in scenes showing them proceeding to the temple of the Aten in chariots drawn by spirited and richly caparisoned horses. Small vignettes occur of men drawing water using shadufs (the ancient bucket and wieghted pole method that until recently was a common sight in Egypt, but is now fast disappearing); fat cattle are fed in their byres; blind musicians, their faces beautifully observed, sing the praises of Akhenaten and the Aten. Everything is alive and thriving under Akhenaten's patronage through the beneficence of the Aten.
Akhenaten, Male or Female?
When the tomb of Akhenaten was rediscovered at Amarna in the early 1880s, portraits of the royal couple were at first thought to represent two females, by virtue of Akhenaten's curious androgynous shape. One explanation for the king's unusual figure was that he suffered from a tumour of the pituitary gland, resulting in what is known as frohlich syndrome. Certain well-known effects of this disorder seem to be very evident in representations of Akhenaten; skull malformation; and lantern-like jaw; the head looking over-heavy on an elongated neck; excessive fat in areas that are more indicative of the female form, e.g. around the thighs, buttocks and breasts; and spindly legs. A side-effect of this condition, however, is infertility, and critics have pointed out that Akhenaten would have been unable to father the six daughters with whom he is so frequently shown on the other hand, he could have been struck by the illness at a later stage in his life.
Akhenaten's resting place
Akhenaten died c. 1334, probably in his 16th regnal year. Evidence found by Professor Geoffrey Martin during re-excavation of the royal tomb at Amarna showed that blocking had been put in place in the burial chamber, suggesting that Akhenaten was buried there initially. Others do not believe that the tomb was used, however, in view of the heavily smashed fragments of his sarcophagus and canopic jars r recovered from it, and also the shattered examples of his ushabtis - found not only in the area of the tomb but also by Petrie in the city.
What is almost certain is that his body did not remain at Amarna. A burnt mummy seen outside the royal tomb in the 1880s, and associated with Egyptian jewelry from the tomb (including a small gold finger ring with Nefertiti's cartouch), was probably Coptic, as was other Egyptian jewelry nearby. Akhenaten's adherents would not have left his body to be despoiled by his enemies once his death and the return to orthodoxy unleashed a backlash of destruction. They would have taken it to a place of safety - and where better to hide it than in the old royal burial ground at Thebes where enemies would never dream of seeking it?
Names, Family and Burial of Akhenaten
Akhenaten's Birth name: Amen-hotep (Amon is Pleased)
Also known as: Amenhotpe IV, Amenophis IV (Greek)
Adopted name (year 5) Akh-en-aten (Servant of the Aten)
Akhenaten's throne name: Nefer-kheperu-re (Beautiful are the Manifestations of Ra)
Akhenaten's father: Amenhotep III
Akhenaten's mother: Tiy
Akhenaten's wives: Nefertiti, Merytaten, Kiya, Mekytaten, Ankhesenpaaten
Akhenaten's son: Tutankhamun
Akhenaten's daughters: Merytaten, Mekytaten, Ankhesenpaaten, Merytaten-tasherit and others
Akhenaten's burial: Akhetaten (el-Amarna) subsequently, Valley of the Kings, Thebes.
Tags:
18th Dynasty,
Akhenaten,
Nefertiti,
Tutankhamun
Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt List
List of Major Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
Amun (alt. Amon)
'The Hidden One', a god of the Theban region who eventually became the principal divinity of the royal lines and the nearest approach to a national god of Egypt. The Temple of Amon in Thebes was one of the most powerful religious foundations, specially in the later periods, eventually threatening the royal power.
Andjeti
A god of the Delta with whom Osiris, who was first associated with the Delta twn of Busiris, was assimilated.
Anbur
A god identified as the creative power of the sun, later recognised as a god of war.
Anubis
A very ancient divinity, originating in Abydos, He is represented as a wolf or jackal; he was associated especially with mummification, the practice of which was the responsibility of his priests.
Apis
A manifestation of Ptah incarnate in a bull with particular markings and physical characteristics, Apis was known in the First Dynasty. His cult became widespread in the Late Period, when the chosen bull (and his mother) were given lives of great luxury in the temple at Memphis and, at death, sumptuous obsequies at Saqqara.
Ash
A god of deserts, of great antiquity, sometimes identified with Set, particularly in the south.
Aten
The personification of the sun's rays, proclaimed by Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) as the supreme god of Egypt. After the king's death Aten was overturned by the priests of Amon, a return to whose worship was demanded by them, signalled by such events as the renaming of King Tutankhaten, Akhenaten's eventual successor, as Tutankhamun.
Atum
'The Undifferentiated One', 'The All', the original creator of the cosmos who, after lying inert in the abyss, appeared on the primordial mound, 'The Divine Emerging Island', to initiate the process of creation. Finding himself alone he masturbated and from his sperm produced the first generation of gods.
Bes
A dwarf god, popular in later times, who was invoked for luck and who facilitated childhirth.
Buchis
A sacred bull, associated with Montu at his cult center at Armant (Hermonthis); the bull was an incarnation of Re and Osiris.
Bastet
A cat goddess, worshipped at Bubastis, a Delta town named in her honour.
Geb
The earth god and father, by the goddess Nut, of Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys. Initially he divided the sovereignty of Egypt between Set and his nephew Horus, gods of the south and north respectively, but eventually gave dominion over the whole land to Horus.
Hapy
The god of the Nile, portrayed with bisexual secondary haracteristics.
Hathor
An ancient cow goddess, associated with Isis, and in whose form queens were frequently depicted.
Heh, Hehet
Frog divinities, representing the element water who, with others of their kind, produce the egg which is placed on the 'Divine Emerging Island'. Heh was also the god of eternity, represented anthropomorphically.
Horakhty
A manifestation of Re as the dawn light appearing on the eastern horizon. In New Kingdom times the Great Sphinx at Giza was thought to be an image of the god Horus and was identified with Horakhty.
Horus
A very ancient sky divinity from the south, the son of Osiris and Isis according to a relatively late myth, who avenged his father's murder by Set, becoming King of Upper and Lower Egypt. All subsequent kings of Egypt were revered as incarnations of Horus. There were many local manifestations of Horus throughout Egypt.
Isis
Sister-wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. Queens were identified with Isis and, especially in the early dynasties, the succession to the throne often passed through the female line by marriage to the heiress. Isis was represented astronomically by the constellation Sirius (Egyptian Sopdet).
Khentiamentiu
An ancient god of the necropolis of Abydos, 'The Foremost of the Westerners' with whom Osiris was assimilated and whose form, swathed in mummy cloths, he adopted. Like Anubis, with whom Khentiamcntiu shares a number of attributes, he is also manifest as a dog or jackal.
Khepri (alt. Kheper)
The scarabeus beetle which was regarded as the manifestation of the sun god. Its practice of laying its eggs in a ball of dung came to symbolise regeneration, and the hieroglyph derived from it signified 'becoming'.
Khnum
The ram-headed god of Elephantine who was responsible for fashioning the Ka of the royal child at the moment of conception, on his potter's wheel.
Ma'at
Truth, divine order; the goddess in whose name the king was said to rule, and by whom he was bound to rule justly.
Mefnut
A lioness goddess.
Mertsager
A snake goddess, revered as the 'Lady of the Pek ' and associated with the pyramid-shaped mountain which rises over the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. Her name means 'She who Loves Silence'.
Meshkent
The goddess of childbirth.
Min
'Lord of Copros', often represented as thongh one-armed and usually ithyphallic.
Mnevis
A god who manifested his presence in a selected bull (see also Apis, Buchis).
Montu
A warrior-god of the Theban region, manifest both as a falcon and as a bull. Montu was particularly reverenced by the kings of the Eleventh Dynasty, eventually being replaced by the ram of Amon as the principal divinity of the Thebaid.
Mut
A lioness-headed goddess whose temple was located at Asher (Thebes). She was sometimes represented as vulture-headed.
Nefertum
Horus as a child, born in the lotus flower and associated with the sun god.
Neith
An ancient warrior-goddess, resident in Sais in northern Egypt. From very early times she was symbolised by a device of crossed arrows.
Nekhbet
The vulture goddess of Nekhen in Upper Egypt and patron goddess of the south, one of 'the Two Ladies', with Uadjet whose power protected the king. Some kings and a number of queens wore the double Uraeus of vulture and cobra.
Nephthys
One of the Heliopolitan Ogdoud, the company of eight primeval gods, the daughter of Geb and the consort of Set.
Nun
The personification of the primeval waters, the abyss, from which the earliest generations of gods were born. At night the sun journeyed to Nun on its voyage through the Underworld.
Nut
The sky goddess whose body symbolised the vault of the heavens. Every evening she swallowed the sun, Re, and every morning gave birth to him. She is trequently represented in the decoration of coffins.
Osiris
The ruler of the Underworld, identified with the king-in-death, who became Osiris. He was the father of Horus who avenged his murder by his brother Set. Osiris was regenerated that he might impregnate Isis; as a consequence he came to be worshipped as the god of rebirth and redemption. In time all the 'justified'
dead became Osiris.
Ptah
The immensely ancient artificer god, Lord of Memphis, where his principal temple was established and hence especially identified with the royal house. He is depicted in human form, though wrapped in mummy cloths. He could also manifest himself in animal form, for example as a bull like Apis, Buchis or Mnevis.
Ptah-Soker-Osiris
A manifestation of Ptah combined with Osiris, particularly important in the region of Saqqara. Later Ptah-Soker-Osir is became transformed into the Graeco Fgyptian god Serapis, one of the archetypes of the bearded, patriarchal sky god.
Re (alt. Ra)
The sun god, from time to time regarded as the king of the gods, with whom the king was united at death.
Sekhmet
A lioness goddess, the consort of Ptah, she roamed the desert outside Giza. Because of an injury done to the eye of Re, her father, she determined to destroy the race of men and was only prevented from doing so by the subterfuge of making her drunk, so that she became unconscious and was carried back to heaven.
Selket
A scorpion-goddess who protected the coffin of the king.
Seshat
An ancient goddess, charged with responsibility for preparing all the divine records, hence for writing, architecture, the measuring of land on which a temple was to be built and, with the king, for determining the temple's axis.
Set (alt. Seth)
Originally the high god of the south of Egypt, Set became a god of deserts, of the storm and chaos. Later, he was regarded as the murderer of his brother, Osiris, and the antagonist of Osiris' heir, Horus. Their conflict over the kingship of Egypt is one of the archetypal themes of Ancient Egypt.
Shesemuw
A god of wine and of the vintage, who also presided over the butchering of bulls.
Shu
The god of air and the sun; he was particularly associated with Heliopolis. He was said to be one of the first two divinities created by Atum.
Sobek
A crocodile-god, worshipped at Kom Ombo, who was especially popular in the Thirteenth Dynasty, when a number of the kings adopted Sobek's name as part of their titulary.
Soker
A god of the dead of Memphis; he was associated in late times with Osiris and Ptah to form the composite divinity Ptah-Soker-Osiris.
Taurt
A hippopotamus goddess, represented standing upright on her rear legs, who was particularly concerned with the supervision of pregnancy and childbirth.
Tefnut
A form of the lioness-goddess Sekhmet.
Thoth
The god of wisdom and the moon who was manifest both as an ibis and as a cynocephalus baboon. It was him who brought the arts of civilization to men.
'The Two Ladies'
The godesses Nekhbet and Uadjet.
Uadjet
The cobra-goddess of the north, the partner of Nekhbet who with her protected the king as part of his Uraeus diadem, sometimes forming with Nekhbet the double uraeus.
Wepwawet (alt. Upwaut)
A dog-god from Abydos, associated with graveyards. His name signifies 'Opener of the Ways' and it was believed that he conducted the dead to judgement.
Amun (alt. Amon)
'The Hidden One', a god of the Theban region who eventually became the principal divinity of the royal lines and the nearest approach to a national god of Egypt. The Temple of Amon in Thebes was one of the most powerful religious foundations, specially in the later periods, eventually threatening the royal power.
Andjeti
A god of the Delta with whom Osiris, who was first associated with the Delta twn of Busiris, was assimilated.
Anbur
A god identified as the creative power of the sun, later recognised as a god of war.
Anubis
A very ancient divinity, originating in Abydos, He is represented as a wolf or jackal; he was associated especially with mummification, the practice of which was the responsibility of his priests.
Apis
A manifestation of Ptah incarnate in a bull with particular markings and physical characteristics, Apis was known in the First Dynasty. His cult became widespread in the Late Period, when the chosen bull (and his mother) were given lives of great luxury in the temple at Memphis and, at death, sumptuous obsequies at Saqqara.
Ash
A god of deserts, of great antiquity, sometimes identified with Set, particularly in the south.
Aten
The personification of the sun's rays, proclaimed by Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) as the supreme god of Egypt. After the king's death Aten was overturned by the priests of Amon, a return to whose worship was demanded by them, signalled by such events as the renaming of King Tutankhaten, Akhenaten's eventual successor, as Tutankhamun.
Atum
'The Undifferentiated One', 'The All', the original creator of the cosmos who, after lying inert in the abyss, appeared on the primordial mound, 'The Divine Emerging Island', to initiate the process of creation. Finding himself alone he masturbated and from his sperm produced the first generation of gods.
Bes
A dwarf god, popular in later times, who was invoked for luck and who facilitated childhirth.
Buchis
A sacred bull, associated with Montu at his cult center at Armant (Hermonthis); the bull was an incarnation of Re and Osiris.
Bastet
A cat goddess, worshipped at Bubastis, a Delta town named in her honour.
Geb
The earth god and father, by the goddess Nut, of Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys. Initially he divided the sovereignty of Egypt between Set and his nephew Horus, gods of the south and north respectively, but eventually gave dominion over the whole land to Horus.
Hapy
The god of the Nile, portrayed with bisexual secondary haracteristics.
Hathor
An ancient cow goddess, associated with Isis, and in whose form queens were frequently depicted.
Heh, Hehet
Frog divinities, representing the element water who, with others of their kind, produce the egg which is placed on the 'Divine Emerging Island'. Heh was also the god of eternity, represented anthropomorphically.
Horakhty
A manifestation of Re as the dawn light appearing on the eastern horizon. In New Kingdom times the Great Sphinx at Giza was thought to be an image of the god Horus and was identified with Horakhty.
Horus
A very ancient sky divinity from the south, the son of Osiris and Isis according to a relatively late myth, who avenged his father's murder by Set, becoming King of Upper and Lower Egypt. All subsequent kings of Egypt were revered as incarnations of Horus. There were many local manifestations of Horus throughout Egypt.
Isis
Sister-wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. Queens were identified with Isis and, especially in the early dynasties, the succession to the throne often passed through the female line by marriage to the heiress. Isis was represented astronomically by the constellation Sirius (Egyptian Sopdet).
Khentiamentiu
An ancient god of the necropolis of Abydos, 'The Foremost of the Westerners' with whom Osiris was assimilated and whose form, swathed in mummy cloths, he adopted. Like Anubis, with whom Khentiamcntiu shares a number of attributes, he is also manifest as a dog or jackal.
Khepri (alt. Kheper)
The scarabeus beetle which was regarded as the manifestation of the sun god. Its practice of laying its eggs in a ball of dung came to symbolise regeneration, and the hieroglyph derived from it signified 'becoming'.
Khnum
The ram-headed god of Elephantine who was responsible for fashioning the Ka of the royal child at the moment of conception, on his potter's wheel.
Ma'at
Truth, divine order; the goddess in whose name the king was said to rule, and by whom he was bound to rule justly.
Mefnut
A lioness goddess.
Mertsager
A snake goddess, revered as the 'Lady of the Pek ' and associated with the pyramid-shaped mountain which rises over the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. Her name means 'She who Loves Silence'.
Meshkent
The goddess of childbirth.
Min
'Lord of Copros', often represented as thongh one-armed and usually ithyphallic.
Mnevis
A god who manifested his presence in a selected bull (see also Apis, Buchis).
Montu
A warrior-god of the Theban region, manifest both as a falcon and as a bull. Montu was particularly reverenced by the kings of the Eleventh Dynasty, eventually being replaced by the ram of Amon as the principal divinity of the Thebaid.
Mut
A lioness-headed goddess whose temple was located at Asher (Thebes). She was sometimes represented as vulture-headed.
Nefertum
Horus as a child, born in the lotus flower and associated with the sun god.
Neith
An ancient warrior-goddess, resident in Sais in northern Egypt. From very early times she was symbolised by a device of crossed arrows.
Nekhbet
The vulture goddess of Nekhen in Upper Egypt and patron goddess of the south, one of 'the Two Ladies', with Uadjet whose power protected the king. Some kings and a number of queens wore the double Uraeus of vulture and cobra.
Nephthys
One of the Heliopolitan Ogdoud, the company of eight primeval gods, the daughter of Geb and the consort of Set.
Nun
The personification of the primeval waters, the abyss, from which the earliest generations of gods were born. At night the sun journeyed to Nun on its voyage through the Underworld.
Nut
The sky goddess whose body symbolised the vault of the heavens. Every evening she swallowed the sun, Re, and every morning gave birth to him. She is trequently represented in the decoration of coffins.
Osiris
The ruler of the Underworld, identified with the king-in-death, who became Osiris. He was the father of Horus who avenged his murder by his brother Set. Osiris was regenerated that he might impregnate Isis; as a consequence he came to be worshipped as the god of rebirth and redemption. In time all the 'justified'
dead became Osiris.
Ptah
The immensely ancient artificer god, Lord of Memphis, where his principal temple was established and hence especially identified with the royal house. He is depicted in human form, though wrapped in mummy cloths. He could also manifest himself in animal form, for example as a bull like Apis, Buchis or Mnevis.
Ptah-Soker-Osiris
A manifestation of Ptah combined with Osiris, particularly important in the region of Saqqara. Later Ptah-Soker-Osir is became transformed into the Graeco Fgyptian god Serapis, one of the archetypes of the bearded, patriarchal sky god.
Re (alt. Ra)
The sun god, from time to time regarded as the king of the gods, with whom the king was united at death.
Sekhmet
A lioness goddess, the consort of Ptah, she roamed the desert outside Giza. Because of an injury done to the eye of Re, her father, she determined to destroy the race of men and was only prevented from doing so by the subterfuge of making her drunk, so that she became unconscious and was carried back to heaven.
Selket
A scorpion-goddess who protected the coffin of the king.
Seshat
An ancient goddess, charged with responsibility for preparing all the divine records, hence for writing, architecture, the measuring of land on which a temple was to be built and, with the king, for determining the temple's axis.
Set (alt. Seth)
Originally the high god of the south of Egypt, Set became a god of deserts, of the storm and chaos. Later, he was regarded as the murderer of his brother, Osiris, and the antagonist of Osiris' heir, Horus. Their conflict over the kingship of Egypt is one of the archetypal themes of Ancient Egypt.
Shesemuw
A god of wine and of the vintage, who also presided over the butchering of bulls.
Shu
The god of air and the sun; he was particularly associated with Heliopolis. He was said to be one of the first two divinities created by Atum.
Sobek
A crocodile-god, worshipped at Kom Ombo, who was especially popular in the Thirteenth Dynasty, when a number of the kings adopted Sobek's name as part of their titulary.
Soker
A god of the dead of Memphis; he was associated in late times with Osiris and Ptah to form the composite divinity Ptah-Soker-Osiris.
Taurt
A hippopotamus goddess, represented standing upright on her rear legs, who was particularly concerned with the supervision of pregnancy and childbirth.
Tefnut
A form of the lioness-goddess Sekhmet.
Thoth
The god of wisdom and the moon who was manifest both as an ibis and as a cynocephalus baboon. It was him who brought the arts of civilization to men.
'The Two Ladies'
The godesses Nekhbet and Uadjet.
Uadjet
The cobra-goddess of the north, the partner of Nekhbet who with her protected the king as part of his Uraeus diadem, sometimes forming with Nekhbet the double uraeus.
Wepwawet (alt. Upwaut)
A dog-god from Abydos, associated with graveyards. His name signifies 'Opener of the Ways' and it was believed that he conducted the dead to judgement.
Egypt : Akhenaten Temple Project - Karnak Complex Part XII
Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :
What is now known as the Akhenaten Temple Project was originally undertaken by the University Museum of Pennsylvania. Now it is subsidized in part by the Antiquities Department and in part by the Smithsonian Institution, and is the first scientific study of antiquities by computer. It entails the extraction of the blocks and the feeding of details of their design, inscriptions, etc. into a computer, which will match the pieces and prepare the way for reconstruction. Modem techniques may thus concentrate a lifetime's work into a decade. The question is whether the blocks will prove to be parts of one immense temple, a worthy companion to the temple of Amon,or a complex of many.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Akhenaten Temple Project is one of the most important pieces of work being done in Luxor today. To date there is a gap in the history of the area. Only in the tomb of Ramose is there an opportunity to compare the age-old tradition of artistic expression with the new . realism characteristic of Akhenaten's time. What a drama when, within the very precincts of Amon's sacred temple where he enjoyed unquestioned dominance for generations, there will rise a structure from a period meant to have been forever forgotten. Side by side with Amon's power and supremacy will be Akhenaten's new faith and symbol , the sun, with its radiating force ending in the gesture of giving.
The eastern avenue of sphinxes extends from the tenth pylon to the Gate of Philadelphus, which is excellently preserved. The temple of Mut is to the south. To the west is the temple of Khonsu and the temple of Osiris adjoins it.
Egypt : Southern Buildings, Karnak Cachette, Seventh to Tenth Pylons - Karnak Complex part XI
Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :
The buildings extending southwards from the central court of the main temple of Karnak are mostly in ruin today. A brief survey will be made, however, to show the importance of the plan of reconstruction over the next ten years. A group of architects arc under contract with the Department of Antiquities for the complete reconstruction of the Karnak area, of which this is only one section, but perhaps the most important.Proceeding from the central court (lying between the third and fourth pylons) are the remains of a court where there is a good view of Ramses II's famous treaty with the Hittites, followed by the seventh pylon. This court was the site of a temple of the Middle Kingdom and it was here that Legrain extracted a fantastic number of works of art from what became known as the Karnak Cachette. Buried in a pit were thousands of pieces including statues in stone and bronze, sphinxes and sacred animals. The bronze items alone numbered 17,000. It seems that one of the Pharaohs decided to have a spring clean in the temple and remove all the junk. Though most of the pieces are of little artistic merit, the find shows that the temple could well have housed the 86,486 statues mentioned in the Great Harris Papyrus. The seventh pylon was built by Thutmose III, and facing it to the south are the remains of two colossal statues of him in red granite. Between the wall suniting the seventh and eighth pylons, to the east, is as mall shrine dating also from the reign of Thutmose III. The eighth pylon was the work of Queen Hatshepsut and is the most ancient part of the structure. In fact there is very little proof of her having built this pylon, for her name was removed from the reliefs by Thutmose II. And following Akhenaten's removal of all allusions to Amon, Seti I restored them, often inserting his own name in place of those of the older rulers. Reconstruction of this area may yet supply the missing clues to the overlapping reigns of the Thutmosides.
In the doorway at the rear left-hand of this court is an important historical relief on the left. It is the first instance in Egypt's long history where the high priest, in this case Amenhotep, is depicted in the same size as the Pharaoh. Standing with arms up lifted, Amenhotep offers flowers to Ramses IX. This relief indicates the growth of priestly power. Faithful traditionalists of the established religion, the priests of Amon had hitherto been righteous, just and devout. The power of leadership had been firmly vested in the throne and they had recognized and accepted this. Over the years however their simple piety had turned to mild interest in earthly matters, then acute interest, and finally to intrigue and a craving for political power. The high priest depicted in this mural makes offerings to the Pharaoh while being draped in linen by two servants. A reciprocal gesture of appreciation? Or a royal bribe?
Beyond the eighth pylon is a row of six royal personages. The best preserved are Amenhotep I (in limestone) and Thutmose II (inredgranite), both to the west. The ninth pylon was built by Harmhab the one-time general. When repairs started it was found to be filled, like its companion the tenth pylon, with blocks from Akhenaten's temple to the Sun. Together with the 40,000-odd blocks from this same period found beneath the hypostyle hall and the second pylon, these number some 60,000 blocks and are valuable clues to a period about which there are many gaps in our knowledge. When the first small,distinctively uniform sand stone blocks were discovered in the pylon of Ramses II, it was at first erroneously assumed that they had been brought lip-river from a dismantled temple in Tel eI Amarna, Drain age operations subsequently led to the excavation of parts of no less than seventeen colossal statues of Akhenaten himself. Akhenaten in fact had had the temple erected before he changed his capital to Tel eI Amarna and while Thebes was witnessing the slow indoctrination of a new religious concept.
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